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Title: A student's history of education

Author: Frank Pierrepont Graves

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDENT'S
HISTORY OF EDUCATION ***

A STUDENT’S HISTORY OF
EDUCATION

BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF
EDUCATION
By
Dean Frank P. Graves
A History of Education in Three Volumes

Vol. I. Before the Middle Ages
Vol. II. During the Middle Ages and
the Transition to Modern
Times
Vol. III. In Modern Times
——
Great Educators of Three Centuries

Peter Ramus and the Educational
Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century

A Student’s History of Education

A STUDENT’S HISTORY
OF EDUCATION

BY
FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES
(Ph.D., COLUMBIA)

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSOR

OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1915,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
——
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1915.

Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO

WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON, LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

WITH APPRECIATIVE MEMORIES OF
SIX PLEASANT YEARS OF ASSOCIATION

PREFACE
There is a growing conviction among those engaged in training teachers
that the History of Education must justify itself. It is believed that, if this
subject is to contribute to the professional equipment of the teacher, its
material must be selected with reference to his specific needs. Antiquarian
interests and encyclopædic completeness are alluring and may in their place
prove praiseworthy and valuable, but they do not in themselves supply any
definite demand in the training of teachers. The greatest services that the
History of Education can perform for the teacher are to impel him to
analyze his problems more completely and to throw light upon the school
practices with which he is himself concerned. By presenting a series of
clear-cut views of past conditions, often in marked contrast to his own, it
should make him conscious that the present educational situation has to a
large degree been traditionally received, and it should at the same time
especially help him to understand the origin and significance of current
practices.

In this way a study of the History of Education will disrupt the teacher’s
complacent acceptance of the present, and will enable him to reconstruct his
ideas in the light of the peculiar conditions out of which the education of his
times has sprung. Whenever historical records do not assist in such an
analysis and synthesis of present day problems, they may be frankly
dismissed from discussion. This conception of the subject, I have myself,
with much reluctance, come to accept. My own regard for the classics,
philosophy, and general history as college disciplines has caused me to
view with apprehension any disposition to curtail their scope. It now seems
clear, however, that the modern tendency to emphasize the functional
aspects of the History of Education is both necessary and wise. The present
work, therefore, is not a mere condensation of my History of Education in
Three Volumes, but has been very largely re-written from the new angle.

In the first place, I have sought to stress educational institutions and
practices, rather than theories that did not find embodiment in the times.

This has led to the omission of much that is unessential or more strictly
related to philosophy, general history, or literature. For example, even the
immortal work of Plato and Aristotle has been epitomized; the entire subject
of mysticism and most of scholasticism have been dropped; the
masterpieces of such pure theorists as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Mulcaster,
are barely mentioned; and the various historical epochs are given only so
much detail as may be needed to form a social setting for the educational
movements of those periods.

Secondly, it has seemed to me that our present problems in education can
best be analyzed through a knowledge of the practices that have developed
in modern times. Hence, while this book includes an account of all
educational endeavor from the day of primitive man to the present,
somewhat more than one-half the material is connected with the last two
centuries. Even the attractive period of Hellenic activity and the fascinating
stories of monasticism and of chivalry have been reduced to a minimum.
But, though most of the changes in the earlier half of the work are in the
nature of shortening, or have to do with more immediate connections, some
topics, notably the development of commerce and cities (Chapter XI) and
the analysis of formal discipline (Chapter XVI), have seemed to be so
closely connected with subsequent progress as to deserve more adequate
treatment.

Finally, since this book is intended chiefly for teachers in the United States,
I have believed it most helpful to give considerable space to the discussion
of American education. The account of each educational movement has
included at least an attempt to trace its influence upon the content, method,
and organization of education in the United States, while three chapters
have been devoted exclusively to the rise of educational systems in this
country.

My indebtedness for many valuable features in this book is heavy. The idea
of an Outline, which appears at the beginning of each chapter, was first
suggested to me by the History of Modern Elementary Education of Dean
S. C. Parker of the College of Education, University of Chicago, although I
have adopted a different explanation of its value. Professor Parker also read
through the manuscript and sent me a general estimate of it. Professors J. H.

Coursault of the University of Missouri, A. J. Jones of the University of
Maine, W. H. Kilpatrick of Columbia University, A. R. Mead of Ohio
Wesleyan University, and A. L. Suhrie of the West Chester (Pennsylvania)
State Normal School, have all read the manuscript through with exceeding
care and furnished me with numerous corrections and criticisms, both
particular and general. Professor T. H. Briggs of Columbia University
suggested a number of improvements in the chapter upon Present Day
Tendencies in Education (XXVII). The chapter upon the Educational
Influences of the Reformation (XIII) has been relieved of several
inaccuracies, and possibly of some Protestant bias, through the assistance of
the Rev. Benedict Guldner, S. J., of St. Joseph’s College, and of Brother
Denis Edward, F. S. C., President of La Salle College, Philadelphia. I have
also, as usual, been greatly aided by my wife, Helen Wadsworth Graves.

F. P. G.

CONTENTS
PART I
ANCIENT TIMES
CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Earliest Education 3
The Value of the History of Education. Its Treatment in This
Book. Primitive Education. Oriental Education. India: Its
Religion and Castes. The Hindu Education. Effect of the Hindu
Education. India as Typical of the Orient. Jewish Education.
CHAPTER II
The Education of the Greeks 11
Progressive Nature of Greek Education. Spartan Education: Its
Aim and Early Stages. Training in Youth and Manhood: Results.
Old Athenian Education: Its Aim and Early Training. Training
for the Youth. Effect of the Old Athenian Education. Causes and
Character of the New Athenian Education. The Sophists and
Their Training. Their Extreme Individualism. The Reactionaries

and the Mediators. The Method of Socrates. Plato’s System of
Education for the Three Classes of Society. The Weakness of
Plato’s System. His Influence upon Educational Theory and
Practice. Aristotle’s Ideal State and Education. The Permanent
Value of His Work. The Post-Aristotelian Schools of Philosophy.
The Schools of Rhetoric. The Hellenic Universities. Extension of
Hellenic Culture.
CHAPTER III
The Education of the Romans 32
Roman Education Amalgamated with Greek. Early Education in
Rome. The Absorption of Greek Culture. The Ludus. Grammar
Schools. Rhetorical Schools. Universities. Subsidization of
Education. Decay of Education. Influence of Roman Education.
CHAPTER IV
The Education of the Early Christians 42
The Ideals of Early Christianity. Early Christian Life as an
Education. Catechumenal Schools. Amalgamation of Christianity
with Græco-Roman Philosophy. Catechetical and Episcopal or
Cathedral Schools. Influence of Græco-Roman Culture upon
Christianity. Rise of the Monastic Schools.
PART II
THE MIDDLE AGES
CHAPTER V
The Monastic Education 53
The Middle Ages as a Period of Assimilation and Repression.
The Evolution and Nature of Monasticism. Benedict’s ‘Rule’ and
the Multiplication of Manuscripts. Amalgamation of Roman and
Irish Christianity. The Organization of the Monastic Schools.
The ‘Seven Liberal Arts’ as the Curriculum. The Methods and
Texts. Effect upon Civilization of the Monastic Schools.
CHAPTER VI
Charlemagne’s Revival of Education 60

Condition of Education in the Eighth Century. Higher Education
at the Palace School. Educational Improvement in the Monastic,
Cathedral, and Parish Schools. Alcuin’s Educational Work at
Tours. Rabanus Maurus, Erigena, and Others Concerned in the
Revival.
CHAPTER VII
Moslem Learning and Education 65
The Hellenization of Moslemism. Hellenized Moslemism in
Spain. Effect upon Europe of the Moslem Education.
CHAPTER VIII
Educational Tendencies of Scholasticism 69
The Nature of Scholasticism. The History of Scholastic
Development. Scholastic Education. Its Value and Influence.
CHAPTER IX
The Mediæval Universities 74
The Rise of Universities. The Foundation of Universities at
Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. Bologna and Paris as the Models for
Other Universities. Privileges Granted to the Universities.
Organization of the Universities. Course in the Four Faculties.
The Methods of Instruction. Examinations and Degrees. The
Value and Influence of the University Training.
CHAPTER X
The Education of Chivalry 83
The Development of Feudalism. The Ideals of Chivalry. The
Three Preparatory Stages of Education. The Effects of Chivalric
Education.
CHAPTER XI
The Burgher, Gild, and Chantry Schools 88
The Rise of Commerce and Industry. Development of Cities and
the Burgher Class. The Gilds and Industrial Education. Gild
Schools. Burgher Schools. Chantry Schools. Influence of the
New Schools.

PART III
THE TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES
CHAPTER XII
The Humanistic Education 99
The Passing of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and the
Revival of Learning. Causes of the Awakening in Italy. The
Revival of the Latin Classics. The Development of Greek
Scholarship. The Court Schools and Vittorino da Feltre. The
Court School at Mantua. The Relation of the Court Schools to
the Universities. Decadence of Italian Humanism. The Spread
and Character of Humanism in the Northern Countries. The
Development of Humanism in France. French Humanistic
Educators and Institutions. Humanism in the German
Universities. The Hieronymians and Their Schools. Erasmus,
Leader in the Humanistic Education of the North. The
Development of Gymnasiums: Melanchthon’s Work. Sturm at
Strassburg. Formalism in the Gymnasiums. The Humanistic
Movement in England: Greek at Oxford and Cambridge.
Humanism at the Court Colet and His School at St. Paul’s.
Humanism in the English Grammar Schools. English Grammar
and Public Schools To-day. The Grammar Schools in the
American Colonies. The Aim and Institutions of Humanistic
Education.
CHAPTER XIII
Educational Influences of the Reformation 124
The Relation of the Reformation to the Renaissance. The Revolt
and Educational Works of Luther. Luther’s Ideas on Education.
The Embodiment of Luther’s Ideas in Schools by His Associates.
The Revolt and Educational Ideas of Zwingli. Calvin’s Revolt
and His Encouragement of Education. The Colleges of Calvin.
Henry VIII’s Revolt and Its Effect upon Education. Foundation
of the Society of Jesus. Organization of the Jesuits. The Jesuit
Colleges. The Jesuit Methods of Teaching. Value and Influence
of the Jesuit Education. The Organization of the Education of the

Port Royalists. The Port Royal Course and Method of Teaching.
La Salle and the Schools of the Christian Brothers. The Aim,
Curriculum, and Method of the Christian Brothers’ Schools.
Influence of the Schools of the Christian Brothers. Aim and
Content of Education in the Reformation. Effect of the
Reformation upon Elementary Education. Effect of the
Reformation upon the Secondary Schools. Influence of the
Reformation upon the Universities. The Lapse into Formalism.
CHAPTER XIV
Early Realism and the Innovators 151
The Rise and Nature of Realism. Humanistic Realism. Social
Realism. The Relations of Humanistic to Social Realism. The
Influence of the Innovators upon Education. The
Ritterakademien. The Academies In England. The Academies in
America.
CHAPTER XV
Sense Realism and the Early Scientific Movement 162
The Development of the Sciences and Realism. Bacon and His
Inductive Method. Bacon’s Educational Suggestions and
Influence. Ratich’s Methods. Comenius: His Training and Work.
His Series of Latin Texts. The Great Didactic. His Encyclopædic
Arrangement of Knowledge. The Method of Nature. The
Influence of Comenius upon Education. Realistic Tendencies in
Elementary Schools. Secondary Schools. The Universities.
CHAPTER XVI
Formal Discipline in Education 179
Locke’s Work and Its Various Classifications. Locke’s
Disciplinary Theory in Intellectual Education. Disciplinary
Attitude in Moral and Physical Training. Origin, Significance,
and Influence of the Theory of Formal Discipline. Opposition to
the Disciplinary Theory and More Recent Modification. Locke’s
Real Position on Formal Discipline.
CHAPTER XVII
Education in the American Colonies 187

American Education a Development from European. Conditions
in Europe from Which American Education Sprang. Colonial
School Organization: The Aristocratic Type in Virginia. The
Parochial Schools in New Netherlands. Sectarian Organization
of Schools in Pennsylvania. Town Schools in Massachusetts.
Education in the Other Colonies.
PART IV
MODERN TIMES
CHAPTER XVIII
Growth of the Democratic Ideal in Education 203
The Revolt from Absolutism. The Two Epochs in the Eighteenth
Century. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. Rousseau and His
Times. Rousseau’s Works.
CHAPTER XIX
Naturalism in Education 210
The Influence of Rousseau’s Naturalism. Naturalistic Basis of
the Emile. The Five Books of the Emile. Estimate of the Emile.
The Sociological Movements in Modern Education. The
Scientific Movement in Modern Education. The Psychological
Movements in Modern Education. The Spread of Rousseau’s
Doctrines. Development of Basedow’s Educational Reforms.
Text-books and Other Works. Course and Methods of the
Philanthropinum. Influence of the Philanthropinum.
CHAPTER XX
Philanthropy in Education 230
Reconstructive Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century. The Rise
of Charity Schools in England. The Schools of the S. P. C. K.
Other Charity Schools. The Charity Schools of the S. P. G.
Charity Schools among the Pennsylvania Germans. The ‘Sunday
School’ Movement in Great Britain. The ‘Sunday School’
Movement in the United States. Value of the Instruction in
‘Sunday Schools.’ The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.
Value of the Monitorial System in England. Results of the

Monitorial System in the United States. The ‘Infant Schools’ in
France. The ‘Infant Schools’ in England. ‘Infant Schools’ in the
United States. The Importance of Philanthropic Education.
CHAPTER XXI
The Period of Transition in American Education 251
Evolution of Public Education in the United States. Rise of the
Common School in Virginia. Similar Developments in the Other
Southern States. Evolution of Public Education in New York.
New York City. Development of Systems of Education in
Pennsylvania and the Other Middle States. Decline of Education
in Massachusetts. Developments in the Other New England
States. The Extension of Educational Organization to the
Northwest. Condition of the Common Schools Prior to the
Awakening.
CHAPTER XXII
Observation and Industrial Training in Education 276
Pestalozzi as the Successor of Rousseau. Pestalozzi’s
Philanthropic and Industrial Ideals. His Industrial School at
Neuhof and the Leonard and Gertrude. His School at Stanz and
Beginning of His Observational Methods. Continuation of His
Methods at Burgdorf, and How Gertrude Teaches Her Children.
The ‘Institute’ at Yverdon and the Culmination of the
Pestalozzian Methods. Pestalozzi’s Educational Aim and
Organization. His General Method. The Permanent Influence of
Pestalozzi. The Spread of Pestalozzian Schools and Methods
through Europe. Pestalozzianism in the United States.
Pestalozzi’s Industrial Training Continued by Fellenberg. The
Agricultural School and Other Institutions at Hofwyl. Industrial
Training in the Schools of Europe. Industrial Institutions in the
United States.
CHAPTER XXIII
Development of Public Education in the United States 302
The Third Period in American Education. Early Leaders in the
Common School Revival. Work of James G. Carter. Horace

Mann as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board. The Educational
Suggestions and Achievements of Mann. Henry Barnard’s Part in
the Educational Awakening. Barnard as Secretary of the
Connecticut State Board. Commissioner of Common Schools in
Rhode Island. State Superintendent of Schools in Connecticut.
Barnard’s American Journal of Education. First United States
Commissioner of Education. Value of Barnard’s Educational
Collections. Educational Development in New England since the
Revival. Influence of the Awakening upon the Middle States.
Public Education in the West. Organization of State Systems in
the South. Development of the American System of Education.
CHAPTER XXIV
Development of Educational Practice 333
Froebel and Herbart as Disciples of Pestalozzi. The Early Career
and Writings of Herbart. Work at Königsberg and Göttingen.
Herbart’s Psychology. The Aim, Content, and Method. The Value
and Influence of Herbart’s Principles. The Extension of His
Doctrines in Germany. Herbartianism in the United States.
Froebel’s Early Life. His Experiences at Frankfort, Yverdon, and
Berlin. The School at Keilhau. Development of the Kindergarten.
Froebel’s Fundamental Concept of ‘Unity.’ Motor Expression as
His Method. The Social Aspect of Education. The Kindergarten.
The Value and Influence of Froebel’s Principles. The Spread of
Froebelianism through Europe. The Kindergarten in the United
States. The Relative Influence of Pestalozzi, Herbart, and
Froebel.
CHAPTER XXV
The Development of Modern Systems 370
National Systems of Education in Europe and Canada. The
Beginning of State Control in Prussia. Educational Achievements
of Frederick the Great. Educational Influence of Zedlitz.
Foundation of the Ministry of Education and Further Progress.
The Elementary System. The Secondary System. Higher
Education. Educational Development In France. The Primary
School System. The Secondary System. The Institutions of

Higher Education. Centralized Administration of the French
Education. Early Development of English Education.
Educational Movements in the Nineteenth Century. Subsequent
Educational Movements. Development of Education in the
Dominion of Canada. The Public School System of Ontario. The
System of Ecclesiastical Schools in Quebec.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Scientific Movement and the Curriculum 397
The Development of the Natural Sciences in Modern Times. The
Growth of Inventions and Discoveries in the Nineteenth Century.
Herbert Spencer and What Knowledge is of Most Worth.
Advocacy of the Sciences by Huxley and Others. The
Disciplinary Argument for the Sciences. Introduction of the
Sciences into Educational Institutions in Germany, France,
England, and the United States. Interrelation of the Scientific
with the Psychological and Sociological Movements.
CHAPTER XXVII
Present Day Tendencies in Education 418
Recent Educational Progress. The Growth of Industrial Training.
Industrial Schools in Europe. Industrial Training in the United
States. Commercial Education in Europe and America. Recent
Emphasis upon Agricultural Training. Moral Training in the
Schools To-day. The Development of Training for Mental
Defectives. Education of the Deaf and Blind. Recent
Development of Educational Method; Dewey’s Experimental
School. Other Experiments in Method. The Montessori Method.
The Statistical Method and Mental Measurements in Education.
Education and the Theory of Evolution. Enlarging Conceptions
of the Function of Education.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Retrospect and Prospect 441
The Development of Individualism. The Harmonization of the
Individual and Society.
Index 447

ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate Fig. Opposite Page
1. 1. Elders explaining to young men of an Australian
tribe at the ‘initiatory ceremonies’ 8
2. A Hindu school in the open air, with the village
schoolmaster teaching boys to write on a strip
of palm leaf with an iron stylus 8
2. 3. The palæstra in education at Athens 14
4. The didascaleum in education at Athens 14
3. 5. Roman school materials 36
6. Scene at a ludus or Roman elementary school 36
4. 7. A monk in the scriptorium 56
8. A monastic school 56
5. 9. The temple of wisdom; an allegorical
representation of the mediæval course of
study 72
6. 10. The lecture in mediæval universities 80
11. The disputation in mediæval universities 80
7. 12 and Preliminaries and termination of a combat in the
13. education of chivalry 86
14. Boys playing tournament with a ‘quintain’ or
dummy man 86
8. 15. Apprenticeship training in a gild 92
16. Gild school at Stratford, where Shakespeare
learned ‘little Latin and less Greek’ 92
9. 17. Great English Public Schools: Winchester and
Eton 120
10. 18. Education of the Jesuits: Jesuit College at
Regensburg and diagram of a Jesuit
schoolroom 136
11. 19. School of the Christian Brothers at Rouen 146
20. A Protestant school in a German village of the
sixteenth century 146

12. 21. A page from the Orbis Pictus of Comenius,
illustrating a lesson on a trade 170
13. 22. Town school at Dedham (Massachusetts) with
watch-tower, built in 1648 198
23. Boston Latin School, founded in 1635 198
24. The buildings of Harvard College, erected in
1675, 1699, and 1720 198
14. 25. The child as a miniature adult 228
26. A naturalistic school 228
15. 27. A monitorial schoolroom 242
28. Pupils reciting to monitors 242
29. Monitor inspecting slates 242
16. 30. A ‘kitchen school’ 268
31. A colonial ‘summer school’ 268
32. The first ‘academy’ founded by Benjamin
Franklin at Philadelphia in 1750 268
17. 33. ‘Father’ Pestalozzi at Stanz 282
34. The ‘table of units’ of Pestalozzi 282
18. 35. Court of Fellenberg’s Agricultural Institute 298
36. General view of Fellenberg’s schools and
workshops 298
19. 37. James G. Carter 312
38. Horace Mann 312
39. Henry Barnard 312
40. Francis W. Parker 312
20. 41. The first high school, established at Boston in
1821 332
42. The University of Michigan in 1855 332
21. 43. ‘The Carpenter’ from Froebel’s Mother Play 360
22. 44. Jean Jacques Rousseau 368
45. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi 368
46. Johann Friedrich Herbart 368

47. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel 368
In text. 48. Diagram of German education 380
In text. 49. Diagram of French education 392
In text. 50. Diagram of English education 392
23. 51. Charles Darwin 404
52. Herbert Spence 404
53. Thomas H. Huxley 404
54. Charles W. Eliot 404
In text. 55. Diagram of vocational education of boys in
Germany 424
24. 56. Indian house constructed in Dewey’s
experimental school 436
57. Part of the Thorndike Writing Scale 436

FOREWORD
Each chapter in this book will be prefaced by an Outline, or generalized
statement of the ideas to be included in it. Logically such an epitome is
needed at the beginning as well as at the end of the chapter. At the
beginning, it serves as a hypothetical or tentative generalization of the facts;
at the end, as a conclusion whose truth has been tested in the light of these
facts and accepted with conviction.

By having this outline in mind when he studies the facts, the student is
enabled not only to see that the general statements are verified and made
more significant by the details, but at the same time to organize the facts
with reference to the generalization, and thereby secure an easier control of
them, and, through the relation of each to the others, discover a fuller
meaning in them all. Then, after this study of the details has established the
truth of the outline and enriched its meaning, he can review the outline and
fix it in mind as the conclusion of the chapter.

PART I
ANCIENT TIMES

A STUDENTS HISTORY OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

THE EARLIEST EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Even a brief survey of the history of education may greatly broaden
one’s view.

Starting with primitive man, we find that his training aims only at the
necessities of life, and is acquired informally through the elders and
the medicine-men.

In Oriental education, the next stage in progress, illustrated by India, a
traditional knowledge is acquired through memoriter and imitative
methods.

While Oriental, Jewish education afforded greater development of
individuality, but it was late in organizing schools, memoriter in
methods, and restricted in content.

Thus all education before the day of the Greeks was largely non-
progressive.

The Value of the History of Education.—The History
Breadth of view
obtained of Education from the earliest times should contribute
largely to one’s breadth of view and prove a study of the
greatest liberal culture. A record of typical instances of the moral, æsthetic,
and intellectual development of man in all lands and at all periods should
certainly enlarge one’s vision and enable him to appreciate more fully the
part that education has played in the progress of civilization. Such cultural
values may be found even in a limited survey of the world’s educational
development.

Its Treatment in This Book.—And this is all that will be
Space and
perspective here undertaken here. For, while valuable as a liberal study,
given to subject the History of Education finds its justification chiefly in
matter. the degree to which it functions in the professional
training of a teacher, and it will be necessary in a brief
treatise to omit or pass over hastily much that might be of interest and value
in a more complete account of the development of civilization. Therefore,
the amount of space and the perspective afforded the various peoples,
epochs, and leaders must here be determined in large measure by the part
they have played in the evolution of educational institutions and practices,
and by the light their history sheds upon the aim, organization, content, and
method of education to-day. At times, too, the history of a single epoch,
state, or educational leader will be selected as a type, to the exclusion of
others equally important, and treated with considerable intensiveness,
instead of describing all sides of the subject with encyclopædic monotony.
Now the first historical epoch to leave a real impress upon modern practice
is that of Athens at its height. Hence a mere statement of the salient features
of education preceding that period is all that can be afforded in this brief
survey. A detailed account of the educational processes used by savage
tribes, Oriental nations, and even Judæa may prove interesting and
important in other connections, but it must here be largely curtailed.

Primitive Education.—There is little to be noted in the
Training through
elders and training of the young among primitive peoples, save that
medicine-men ties it is intended largely for the satisfaction of immediate
the savage to the wants—food, clothing, and shelter. Naturally no such
present.
actual institution as a school has yet been evolved, but the
training is transmitted informally by the parents. The method used is simply
that of example and imitation, or, more specifically, ‘trial and success.’ But
a more conscious and formal education is given at puberty through the
‘initiatory ceremonies’ (Fig. 1). In these rites the youths are definitely
instructed by the older men about their relation to the spirits and the totem
animals, subordination to the elders, the relations of the sexes, the
sacredness of the clansman’s obligations, and other traditional usages. Strict
silence is enjoined upon them concerning this information, and to impress it
upon their minds, and test their endurance, they are required to fast for
several days and are often tortured and mutilated. As the savage does not

clearly distinguish between himself and the tribe to which he belongs, there
is practically no development of individuality, and since the race has not yet
learned to treasure its experience in writing, he has no record of past
experience and is virtually tied to the present.

Oriental Education.—The nations of the ancient Orient
Vocational training
—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, China, India, and Persia—
and class divisions
of the Orient. may be said to represent the next higher stage in
civilization. Their systems of education prepare mostly
for vocations, and are not sufficiently advanced to undertake a training for
manhood or citizenship. But since a division of labor has now been
evolved, the training has become more clearly differentiated and fits for
specific occupations. In this way, class divisions, or even castes, have
generally arisen in society, and the young people are educated according to
the position in life they desire, or are required to fill. As an illustration of
this stage of development, we may consider somewhat in detail the social
environment and education of India.

India: Its Religion and Castes.—In India, largely as a
Mystic religion and
caste system in result of the debilitating climate, there was formulated
India. about 1200 B. C. a dreamy philosophy, according to
which nothing except Brahma, the one universal spirit,
really exists. While men would seem to be temporarily allowed a separate
existence of their own, it was held that they should remain inactive as far as
possible and seek an ultimate absorption into the great Eternal Spirit.
Although somewhat modified by the infusion of Buddhism, between 500 B.
C. and 500 A. D., and by the British occupation of the peninsula during the
nineteenth century, this mystic and static religion still dominates in India.
Connected with it is the caste system, by which the people are divided into
four hereditary classes. These are (1) the brahmins, or sacerdotal class,
which includes all those trained for law, medicine, teaching, and other
professional occupations; (2) the warriors, or military and administrative
caste; (3) the industrial group; and (4) the sudras, or menial caste.
Altogether outside the social order are the pariahs, or outcasts. The caste
system is exceedingly strict. One may fall into a lower caste, but he cannot
rise, and loss of caste by one person in a family will degrade all the rest.

The Hindu Education.—Hence Hindu education has always endeavored to
fill the pupils with the tenets of their religion, and so prepare them for
absorption into the Infinite, rather than for activities in this life, and to
preserve the caste system and keep all within the sphere of their occupation.
The three upper castes are, therefore, supposed to gain a
Knowledge of
sacred books and knowledge of certain sacred works, especially the four
training in laws and Vedas or books of ‘knowledge,’ the six Angas on
traditions. philosophical and scientific subjects, and the Code of
Manu, which is a collection of traditional customs; but
few, outside the brahmin class, are ever allowed to take advantage of this
opportunity. The warriors are expected to pay more attention to martial
exercises, and the industrial caste to acquire through apprenticeship the arts
necessary for its hereditary occupations. Sudras, pariahs, and women are
generally allowed no education. Except the sudras, all the castes obtain
elementary education from a study of the laws, traditions, and customs of
the country through the medium of the family, and more recently through
village schools held in the open air (Fig. 2). The higher education is largely
carried on in brahminic colleges, called parishads, and, as also in the case
of the elementary work, the teachers have to be brahmins. Since all learning
has been preserved by tradition, the chief methods of instruction are those
of memorizing and imitation. Even the later texts are so written as to be
easily committed, and the lines are sung aloud by the pupils until they have
memorized them. Writing is learned by imitating the teacher’s copy on the
sand with a stick, then on palm leaves with a stylus (Fig. 2), and finally on
plane leaves with ink.

Effect of the Hindu Education.—Hence, among the
Much traditional
learning, but no Hindus education is forbidden to ninety-five per cent of
progress results. the population, and, as far as it does exist, it is a mere
stuffing of the memory. It concerns itself but little with
mental culture or with preparation for real living. The brahmins have
handed down considerable traditional learning, grammar, phonetics,
rhetoric, logic, ‘Arabic’ notation, algebra, astronomy, and medicine, but
new knowledge of any sort is barred. The Hindus still plow with sticks of
wood, and their crops are harvested and threshed by devices equally
primitive. They bake bricks, work metals, and weave cloth, but with the
same kind of appliances that were used by their remote ancestors. Until

recently, they have been greatly lacking in ambition, self-reliance, and
personal responsibility, and have not yet come to any feeling of solidarity or
national unity. To them prosperity and progress are foreign ideas.

India as Typical of the Orient.—The other countries of
Oriental education
in bondage to the the ancient Orient never fixed their social classes in so
past. hard and fast a manner, and have never included so
elaborate a philosophy among the products of their
culture. But India may well be considered broadly typical of the stage of
development in the Orient. Certain common features appear in the
education of all the nations there. In the system of each, the classes below
the sacerdotal or priestly are given little intellectual education, and the
women none at all, but both are trained by apprenticeship in their vocations.
Actual schools, both elementary and higher, have been instituted; and the
latter, except in China, are conducted at temples or priestly colleges by
members of the sacerdotal class. The educational content is naturally
traditional. It is, for the most part, ensured against change by being
embalmed in sacred books, such as the Vedas. The educational method
consists largely in the memorizing of the test and imitation of the copy set,
and little attempt is made to give a reason for the customs and traditional
knowledge taught. Hence, while individuality has begun to emerge, it is
suppressed by every agency possible; and, although these peoples have
largely overcome the primitive enslavement to nature and the present, they
are completely in bondage to the past.

Fig. 1.—Elders explaining to young men of an Australian
tribe at the ‘initiatory ceremonies.’
(Reproduced from Spencer and Gillen’s Across Australia.)

Fig. 2.—A Hindu school in the open air, with the village
schoolmaster teaching boys to write on a strip of palm leaf
with an iron stylus.
Reproduced from Things as They Are by Amy Wilson-Carmichael, by permission
of the Fleming H. Revell Company.)

Jewish Education.—The Jews are classed among the nations of the Orient,
but they formulated loftier aims and have exerted more
Greater
development of influence upon modern ideals in education. While their
personality, theology greatly developed in the course of their history,
from the first they held to an ethical conception of God,
and the chief goal of their education was the building of moral and religious
character. Not until after the Babylonish captivity (586-536 B. C.), however,
did they establish actual schools. Before that, children were given an
informal training in the traditions and observances of their religion by their
parents. But they brought back from Babylon the idea of institutions for
higher training and started such schools through their synagogues. In the
second century B. C. the founding of elementary schools also began, and
eventually the Jews made education well-nigh universal. The beneficial
effect of this training is seen in the respect shown by the Jews for their
women, their kind treatment of children, and their reverence for parents.
The defects of their education appear in the stereotyped and formal way in
which the religious material came to be interpreted, and the consequent
hostility to science and art, except as they threw light on
but Oriental and
non-progressive. some religious festival or custom. Although appeal was
made to various types of memory, systems of mnemonics
devised, and other good pedagogical features suggested, their methods of
instruction were largely memoriter. The Jewish system of education, as a
whole, afforded a greater development of personality than that of the other
Oriental nations, and through it have been spread some of the world’s most
exalted religious conceptions. Nevertheless, it did not depart much from its
traditions and the past, and to this extent it may be classed with the training
of the primitive tribes and of the Oriental nations as predominantly non-
progressive.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

For general works, see Graves, F. P., History of Education before the Middle
Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chaps. I-XI; Monroe, P., Text-book in the History
of Education (Macmillan, 1905), chaps. I-II. A general interpretation of the
evolution of education in savagery and barbarism is also given in Laurie, S.
S., Pre-Christian Education (Longmans, Green, 1909), pp. 1-207; Morgan,
L. H., Ancient Society (Holt, 1907), Part I; and Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals
(Macmillan, 1913), vol. I, chaps. I-V. An illustration of primitive training of
especial interest to American students is found in Spencer, F. C., Education
of the Pueblo Child (Columbia University, Department of Philosophy and
Psychology, vol. 7, no. 1); and a detailed description of the puberty rites of
a variety of savage tribes, in Webster, H., Primitive Secret Societies,
(Macmillan, 1908), chaps. I-V. A more complete account of the Hindu
philosophy and education appears in Dutt, R. C., Civilization of India
(Dent, London), and Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals (Macmillan, 1913), vol. I,
chaps. III and IV. A systematic statement of the Jewish training has been
adapted from a German work, in Leipziger, H. M., Education of the Jews
(New York Teachers College, 1890), and a more detailed account worked
out in Spiers, B., School System of the Talmud (Stock, London, 1898).

CHAPTER II

THE EDUCATION OF THE GREEKS

OUTLINE

The Spartan training was intended to serve the state by making
warriors, and little attention was paid to intellectual education.

At first the Athenian education was also mainly concerned in serving
the state. For the earliest stage of the boy’s education, there were
schools of two types,—one for intellectual training, as well as one for
physical; from fifteen to eighteen a more advanced physical training
was given; and then, for two years, a preparation for military life.

After the Persian wars, the Athenians adopted ideals of education
affording a larger recognition of individualism. The sophists
introduced the new educational practices, and went to an extreme in
their individualism.

The systematic philosophers,—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, tried to
mediate the outworn institutional education and the extreme
individualism. Socrates held that the sophistic ‘knowledge’ was only
‘opinion,’ and that the more universal knowledge could be reached in
every person by stripping off his individualistic opinion.

But Plato maintained that only the intellectual class could attain to
knowledge. For them he formulated a new course of study, in addition
to that in vogue, consisting of mathematical subjects and dialectic.
Aristotle held that the training for every one before seven should be
bodily; up to fourteen, the irrational soul should be trained; and until
twenty-one, the rational. While Plato and Aristotle had little effect
upon educational practice at the time, they have since greatly
influenced education.

After Aristotle, there arose individualistic schools of philosophy and
formal schools of rhetoric, and out of them universities sprang up.
Then Greek culture and education spread throughout the world.

Progressive Nature of Greek Education.—Real
First development
of individuality educational progress began with the Greeks. In their
appeared among training gradually appeared considerable regard for
Greeks. individuality. They were the first people whose outlook
seems to have been toward the future rather than the past,
and they first made a serious attempt to promote human development in
accordance with a remote ideal progressively revealed. As a result, they not
only gave a wonderful impetus to educational practice in their own time,
but ever since then the world has had constant recourse to them for
inspiration and counsel. While this intellectual emancipation did not appear
to any extent before its development among the Athenians in the middle of
the fifth century B. C., well-planned systems of education existed in Greece
several centuries before this and paved the way for the system in Athens
during the Age of Pericles.

Spartan Education: Its Aim and Early Stages.—Among the states of
ancient Greece, Sparta possessed the earliest education of which we have
any extended information. Its citizens dwelt in the midst of hostile peoples
they had subjugated, and this made it necessary to produce a race of hardy
and patriotic warriors. Strength, courage, and obedience to the laws were
held as the aim of education. The Spartan educational
Service to state the
object. system was intended to serve the state, and the rights of
the individual were given little or no consideration. State
control began with birth. The infant was immediately inspected by a council
of elders, and, if he were sickly or deformed, he was
Exposure of sickly
infants. ‘exposed’ to die in the mountains; but if he appeared
physically promising, he was formally adopted by the
state and left with his mother for rearing until seven. At that age the boys
were placed in charge of a state officer and ate and slept in a kind of public
barracks. Here their life became one of constant drill and discipline. In
addition to hard beds, scanty clothing, and little food,
Barracks training of
boys. they were given a graded course in gymnastics. Besides
ball-playing, dancing, and the pentathlum—running,

jumping, throwing the discus, casting the javelin, and wrestling—the
exercises included boxing, and even the brutal pancratium, in which any
means of overcoming one’s antagonist—kicking, gouging, and biting, as
well as wrestling and boxing—was permitted.

The Spartan boys, however, received only a little
Little intellectual or
moral training. informal training in the way of intellectual education.
They simply committed to memory and chanted the laws
of Lycurgus and selections from Homer, and they listened to the
conversation of the older men during the meals at the common table, and
were themselves exercised in giving concise and sensible answers to
questions put to test their wisdom. Every adult was also required to choose
as his constant companion or ‘hearer’ a youth to whom he might become an
‘inspirer.’

Training in Youth and Manhood: Results.—When a youth reached
eighteen, he began the distinctive study of warfare. For two years he was
trained in the use of arms and skirmishing, and every ten days had his
courage and his physique tested by being whipped before the altar of
Artemis. Then he regularly entered the army, and for ten
Military training.
years guarded some border fortress and lived upon the
coarsest of fare. When he became thirty, he was considered a man and
forced to marry at once, but even then he could visit his wife only
clandestinely and was still obliged to live in common with the boys and
assist in their training.

The education of women was very like that of the men. While the girls were
allowed to live at home, they were given a similar
Similar education
of girls. physical training in the hope that they would become the
mothers of sturdy sons. Thus the Spartan education was
shaped entirely with reference to the welfare of the state. Their educational
system served well its purpose of creating strong warriors and devoted
citizens, but it failed to make for the highest manhood. Sparta developed
practically no art, literature, or philosophy, and produced little that tended
to promote civilization. She has left to the world little but examples of
heroism and foolhardiness alike.

Old Athenian Education: Its Aim and Early Training.—For many
centuries the Athenian education was not unlike the Spartan in promoting
the welfare of the state without much consideration of individual interests.
But even in early days Athens felt that the state was best served when the
individual secured the most complete personal development. Hence, the
Athenian boys began to receive at seven years of age two
Two types of
schools: (1) the kinds of training,—(1) the pentathlum and other physical
palaestra, exercises in the palaestra (Fig. 3) or exercising ground,
furnishing physical and (2) singing and playing upon the flute or lyre, and
training; (2) the
didascaleum, reading and writing at the didascaleum (Fig. 4.) or music
furnishing music, school. After the boy had learned his letters by tracing
reading, and
writing.
them in the sand, he was taught to copy verses and
selections from well-known authors, at first upon wax-
The paedagogus. tablets with a stylus, and later upon parchment with pen
and ink. It was, moreover, necessary for the pupils in
singing to be taught the rhythm and melody, and to understand the poem so
as to bring out its meaning. Hence the explanations and interpretations
given by the teachers brought in all the learning of the times, and the moral
and intellectual value of the studies must have been much greater than
would be suggested by the meagerness of the course. Some moral training
and discipline were also given the boy by a slave called the paedagogus,
who conducted him to school and carried his lyre and other appurtenances.
This functionary was often advanced in years or incapacitated for other
duties by physical disability.

Fig. 3.—The palaestra.

Fig. 4.—The didascaleum.
(Reproduced from illustrations taken from old vases by Freeman in his Schools of
Hellas.)

Training for the Youth.—At fifteen the Athenian boy
Advanced physical
training in might take physical training of a more advanced
gymnasia, and character at one of the exercising grounds just outside
ephebic course in Athens, which were known as gymnasia. He was now
military duties.
permitted to go wherever he wished and become
acquainted with public life through first-hand contact. When eighteen the
youth took the oath of loyalty to Athens, and for two years as an ephebus or
cadet continued his education with a course in military duties. The first year
he spent in the neighborhood of Athens and formed part of the city garrison,
but in the second year he was transferred to some fortress on the frontier. At
twenty the young man became a citizen, but even then his training
continued through the drama, architecture, sculpture, and art that were all
about him.

Effect of the Old Athenian Education.—Little attention
Women given little
training. was, however, given by the Athenians to the education of
woman. It was felt that her duties demanded no
knowledge beyond ordinary skill in household affairs. With this exception,
the Athenian education was superior to the Spartan in allowing greater
opportunity for individual development and in furnishing a more rounded
training. Nevertheless, until about the middle of the fifth
Resemblance of old
Athenian education century B. C., while differing considerably in degree
to Spartan. from Sparta, Athens may be grouped with that country as
adhering to the ‘old’ education, where the individual was
subordinated to the good of the social whole.

Causes and Character of the New Athenian Education.—This
characterization is, of course, in contrast to Greek education in the ‘new’
period, which is represented by Athens alone. This later type of education
was probably somewhat the result of the gradual rise of democratic ideals in
Athens, but a more immediate set of factors grew out of the Persian wars
(492-479 B. C.). This extended conflict with a powerful Oriental people,
possessing a well-organized but widely different body of traditions tended
to broaden the views of the Athenians greatly, and the ensuing political and
commercial intercourse with a variety of dependent states and nations in the
Delian League, together with social contact with the foreigners from every
land that were thronging the streets of Athens, led even more directly to a

reconstruction of practices and beliefs. A rapid transition
Extreme
individualism in in the old traditions took place and society seems for a
new Athenian time to have been sadly disorganized. The old was
education. shattered, and while new ideals were being constructed, a
groping ensued. Although the latitude given the
individual was destined, as always, to produce progress in the long run, and
was of great ultimate service to the world, more immediately a low ebb in
morals at Athens resulted. Individualism ran riot. Education reflected the
conditions of the period. Its ideals became more and more individualistic.
The times demanded a training that would promote the happiness of the
individual with little consideration for the welfare of the state as a whole.
The old education seemed narrow and barren of content; and there arose a
desire for all sorts of knowledge that might contribute to one’s
advancement, whether it increased his social usefulness or not. Skill in
debate and public speaking was especially sought, because of the unusual
opportunity for personal achievement in politics.

The Sophists and Their Training.—To meet these new
Study of
grammatical and demands, a set of teachers known as the sophists came
into prominence. They professed to train young men for a
rhetorical subtleties,
in the place of the
political career, and some of them even claimed to teach
old education.
any subject whatsoever, or how to defend either side of
an argument. These pretensions, together with their charging a fee for their
services, contrary to Athenian custom, seriously offended the more
conservative of the citizens of Athens. But many of the first sophists
afforded an honest and careful training. The effect of their teaching was
especially felt by the adolescents in the gymnasium stage of education,
since they were ambitious to distinguish themselves politically. The
physical training that had hitherto dominated the gymnasium course gave
way to a study of grammatical and rhetorical subtleties, and whenever a
sophist appeared in the street, market-place, or house, the young men
crowded about him to borrow from his store of experience and wisdom, and
acquire his method of argument. To a less degree the same influence was
felt in the lower schools and by the cadets and younger citizens. The
exercises of the palaestra were no longer as rigorous, and existed for the
sake of individual health and pleasure rather than for the making of citizens.
The literary work of the didascaleum came to include, besides the Homeric

epics, a wide range of didactic, reflective, and lyric poetry, with a
superabundance of discussions. In music the old patriotic and religious
songs sung to the simple Doric airs and accompanied upon the seven-
stringed lyre, were replaced by rhythms of great difficulty, like the Lydian
and Phrygian, and by complicated instruments of all sorts.

Their Extreme Individualism.—All this inroad upon
Reaction from the
the time honored curriculum shows how fully the
old subordination of
sophists embodied the individualism of the times.
the individual to the
state. Although they held no body of doctrine common to them
all, they were generally at one in their position of extreme
individualism. They often went so far as to insist that there could not safely
be any universal criteria in knowledge or morals; that no satisfactory
interpretation of life could be made for all, but that every fact and situation
should be subject to the judgment of the individual. No doubt the formula
attributed to Protagoras, “Man (i. e. the individual) is the measure of all
things, both of the seen and the unseen,” would have expressed the attitude
common to most of them. They but carried to its legitimate conclusion the
complete reaction from the old ideal of subordination of the individual to
the state.

The Reactionaries and the Mediators.—Meanwhile, the conservative
element was making its usual attempt to adjust the unsettled conditions by
suggesting a return to the old. Various schemes had been advanced, even
before the sophists had come into prominence. Of these
The attitude of
Pythagoras and the most complete plan was that of Pythagoras (about
Aristophanes; 580-500 B. C.). By adopting an analogy from the
‘harmony’ of the celestial bodies and from the relation of
the powers in the individual to each other, he arranged a definite hierarchy
in society, so that each member should have his proper place, and complete
harmony and social order should ensue. As the influence of the sophists
began to be felt, later representatives of the reactionary movement, such as
the matchless caricaturist, Aristophanes (445-380 B. C.), began to appear
and inveigh against the new conditions. But the social process can never
move backward, and reconstruction on some higher plane was needed to
overcome the destructive tendencies of the times. To furnish this, was the
task set themselves by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Like the sophists, they

recognized that the traditional beliefs and sanctions, the
and of Socrates,
old social order, and the former ideals and content of
Plato, and Aristotle.
education, had been outlived, and that the individual
could not find truth and morality through an institutional system. At the
same time they felt that the extreme individualism of the sophists was too
negative a basis upon which to build, and that a more socialized standard of
knowledge and morality must be sought.

The Method of Socrates.—This mediating effort was begun by Socrates
(469-399 B. C.). While he started with the formula of Protagoras, he
maintained that the ‘man’ indicated thereby was not the individual, but
mankind as a whole. It is not the peculiar view of any individual that
represents the truth, but the knowledge that is the same for everyone. The
former, which the sophists considered ‘knowledge,’
‘Knowledge’ versus
‘opinion’. Socrates held to be only ‘opinion,’ and declared that the
reason men think so differently is because each sees but
one side of the truth. He believed that everyone could get at universal
knowledge by stripping off individual differences and laying bare the
essentials upon which all men are agreed. He conceived it to be the mission
of the philosopher or teacher to enable the individual to do this, and he
endeavored to deal with the mind of all those with whom he came in
contact, so that they would form valid conclusions. By
The ‘dialectic’ of
Socrates. his method, known as the dialectic, or ‘conversational,’
he first encouraged the individual to make a definite
statement of his belief, and then, through a set of clever questions, caused
the person to develop his thought, until he became so involved in manifest
contradictions that he was forced to admit that his view had been
imperfectly formed. He thus caused the individual to see that the view he
had first expressed was mere ‘opinion’ and but a single phase of the
universal truth. As Socrates further held that morality consists in right
knowledge and made no distinction between the knowledge of an action
and the impulse to perform it, he strove through his methods of developing
knowledge to harmonize the individual welfare with that of the social
group.

Plato’s System of Education for the Three Classes of Society.—But the
believers in the old traditions and institutional morality felt that Socrates

was atheistic and immoral. They persuaded Athens to give him the
hemlock, and thus destroyed the man who might have proved her savior. A
pupil, Plato (427-347 B. C.), undertook to continue his work, but his
aristocratic birth and temperament caused him to underestimate the
intelligence of the masses. He held that they were incapable of attaining to
‘knowledge’—that they possessed only ‘opinion.’ In his most famous
dialogue, The Republic, he endeavors to show that the
In the Republic
government was to ideal state can exist only when the entire control of the
be by the government is entrusted to the ‘philosophers,’ or
intellectual class. intellectual class, who alone possess ‘real knowledge.’
Those who are to compose the three classes of society
Plato would have selected during the educational process on the basis of
their ability. For all boys up to eighteen years of age he prescribes an
education similar to that in vogue in the palaestra, didascaleum, and
gymnasium, except that he would somewhat expurgate
Early education.
the literary element, and would confine the musical
training to the simpler melodies and instruments. The youths who prove
capable of going beyond this lower education are next to take up the cadet
training between eighteen and twenty, but those who are
Cadet training.
incapable of further education are to be relegated to the
industrial class. During the cadet period are to be determined those capable
of going on with the higher education of philosophers, while those who here
reach their limit become members of the military class.

As Athenian education did not extend beyond the twentieth year, Plato is
here obliged to invent a new course of study that will enable the future
philosophers to acquire the habit of speculation. This
Higher education
for philosophers: additional course, he declares, should also be graded, in
order that a further test of intellectual and moral qualities
may be made. Arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, music, and astronomy,
are to occupy the first ten years of the course. These
(1) mathematical
subjects; subjects, however, are not to be studied for calculation or
practical purposes of any sort, but entirely from the
standpoint of theory or the universal relations underlying them, since only
thus can they furnish a capacity for abstract thought. After this, at thirty, the
young men who can go no further, are to be placed in the minor offices of
the state, while those who have shown themselves capable of the study of

dialectic, go on with that subject for five years longer. It
(2) dialectic.
then becomes the duty of these highest philosophers to
guide and control the state until they have reached the age of fifty, when
they may be allowed to retire.

The Weakness of Plato’s System.—Thus, where Socrates found the basis
of universal truth in everyone, Plato held that only one class of people, the
most intellectual, could attain to real knowledge. He, therefore, maintained
that the philosophers should absolutely guide the conduct of the state, and
that education should be organized with that in view. Plato’s ideal state
would thus become a sort of intellectual oligarchy, and in
Return to
subordination of the a way was a return to the old principle of subordinating
individual; the individual to society. The Republic thus quite
neglected human will as a factor in society and assumed
that men can be moved about in life like pieces upon the
neglect of human
will; chess board. Plato failed to see, too, that each individual
really possesses all human characteristics. The workers
failure to see all have reason, and the philosophers have passions, and a
human traits in each human being is not a man unless all these functions are
individual;
his. But even if his scheme had been a happy one, the
treatise provided no method of evolution from current
no means of
evolution. conditions, and if it were further granted that this order of
things could be established at once. Plato put the ban
upon all innovation or change, and so closed the door to progress.

Hence The Republic was viewed as a visionary conception, and had no
immediate effect upon education or any other institution of Athens. So in
his declining years, without denying The Republic as ideal, he wrote the
more practical dialogue known as The Laws. In it he
The Laws offered a
more practical and welded elements from the educational systems of Sparta
traditional system and older Athens, and reverted to traditions and ideals not
of education. dissimilar to the doctrines of Pythagoras. He replaced the
philosophers with priests, an hereditary ruler, a
superintendent of education, and various other officials; and the course of
study reached its height with the subject of mathematics, while dialectic
was not mentioned.

His Influence upon Educational Theory and Practice.—Thus the efforts
of Socrates, as continued by Plato, to obtain the benefit of the growing
individualism for society and education without disrupting them, had
seemingly come to naught. Nevertheless, Plato has had considerable
influence upon the thought and practice of men since the Greek period. The
ideal society where everything is well managed and everyone is in the
position for which nature intended him, has ever since the day of The
Republic been a favorite theme for writers, as witness
Model for later
Utopias. More’s Utopia and the New Atlantis of Bacon. A specific
movement that shows the impress of Plato, as we shall
see later, is the formulation of the more advanced studies of the mediæval
‘seven liberal arts’ under the name of the ‘quadrivium.’ It
The ‘quadrivium’
and ‘formal is even possible that the whole conception of ‘liberal’
discipline.’ studies, and so the doctrine of ‘formal discipline’ (see p.
182), may be traced back to Plato’s idea that the
mathematical subjects in the course for philosophers should never be
studied from a practical point of view. On the whole, Plato has been a factor
in educational theory and practice that cannot be overlooked.

Aristotle’s Ideal State and Education.—A more practical attempt to unify
the new with the old in Athenian society and education was made by
Aristotle (386-322 B. C.), the pupil of Plato. From his father, the court
physician at Macedon, and from his study under Plato, Aristotle obtained an
excellent scientific training, which is evident in the way he approaches his
problems. It is in his Politics especially that he discusses the ideal state and
the training of a citizen. His method of investigation to determine the nature
of this ideal state is inductive, and before formulating his conception of it,
he makes a critical analysis of Plato’s Republic and Laws, and analyzes the
organization of many other states, both ideal and actual. He concludes that a
monarchy is theoretically the best type of government,
Theoretically a
monarchy, but but that the form most likely to be exercised for the good
practically a of the governed is the democracy. He then considers in
democracy is best. detail the best natural and social conditions for a state.
Among these practical considerations is the proper
education to make its citizens virtuous.

Since virtue is of two kinds, moral or practical, and
Education
intellectual or speculative, and the former is merely the
necessary for virtue.
stepping-stone to the latter, the education needed for the
virtue of the state must not, like that of Sparta, be purely a training for war
and practical affairs. In marking off the periods of education, Aristotle holds
that “the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul, and the training
of the impulsive side of the soul ought to come next;
Training of the
body,— nevertheless, the care of it must be for the sake of the
reason, and the care of the body for the sake of the soul.”
The development of the body he wishes to start even
sensible advice.
before birth by having the legislator “consider at what
age his citizens should marry and who are fit to marry.” Also he deems it
necessary to sanction the usage of his time of ‘exposing’ (see p. 13) all
deformed and weakly children. However, his advice concerning the food,
clothing, and exercise of children is humane and in keeping with the best
modern hygiene.

The training of the body is a preparation for the formal schooling, which is
to last from seven to twenty-one. This is divided into two periods by
puberty, the first to be devoted to the training of the impulsive or irrational
side of the soul, and the second to that of the rational
Training of the
irrational soul,— side. Education, he claims, should be public, as in Sparta,
for it is the business of the state to see that its citizens are
all rendered virtuous. However, the industrial classes, not being citizens,
have no need of education, and women are to be limited in the scope of
their training. The course of study for the irrational period is largely the
same as that in use at Athens,—gymnastics, music, and
gymnastics, music,
and literary literary subjects, although he recommends some reforms.
subjects. Gymnastics is intended for self-control and beauty of
form, and the making of neither athletes nor warriors
should be the object, since the training of the former exhausts the
constitution, and that of the latter is brutalizing. The literary subjects, which
with Aristotle includes drawing, as well as reading and writing, are not to be
taught merely for utilitarian reasons. Music is to be used not so much for
relaxation or intellectual enjoyment as for higher development. Since
melodies that afford pleasure are connected with noble ideas, and those
which give us pain are joined to debased ideas, the study of music

“cultivates the habit of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in
good dispositions and noble actions.” Another moral effect of music is that
it produces katharsis or ‘purification’; that is, by arousing in us pity and
fear for humanity at large, it lifts us out of ourselves and affords a safe vent
for our emotions.

Such was to be the training for the body and for the irrational period, but
how Aristotle would have advised that the education of
Training of the
rational soul,— the rational soul be carried on can only be surmised, since
mathematical the treatise breaks off suddenly at this point. It is
subjects, dialectic, probable that it would have included a higher training in
and sciences.
mathematical subjects and dialectic similar to that
advocated by Plato, and, from Aristotle’s own predilections, he would have
been likely also to add some of the physical and biological sciences.

The Permanent Value of His Work.—Thus Aristotle, like Plato,
endeavored to work out the harmonizing of individual with social interests
by the creation of an ideal state, and he similarly failed to answer the
demand of the times. His work was much less visionary than The Republic,
but he did not fully recognize that the day of the small isolated states of
Greece, with their narrow prescriptions for patriotism and social order, had
passed forever. Hence he hoped to achieve some reform
Somewhat in
bondage to his by departing but little from existing conditions and
times. reading a philosophy into them, and this bondage to the
times prevented his educational system from making any
advance beyond that of Plato. But while Aristotle had little effect upon the
society of the times, his works have since been considered of great value,
and the methods that he formulated have been most important. He not only
started, or made the first great contributions to a number
Contribution to
sciences, of sciences, but he crystallized the laws of thought itself.
formulation of laws Also, as instruments to assist in fashioning the various
of thought, and sciences, Aristotle invented a complete system of
invention of
terminology. terminology, and created such pairs as ‘matter’ and
‘form,’ ‘mean’ and ‘extreme,’ and ‘cause’ and ‘effect,’
and such convenient expressions as ‘principle,’ ‘maxim,’ ‘habit,’ and
‘faculty.’ A more important effect of Aristotle’s ideas has been that upon the
formulation of doctrine in the Christian Church. After the spread of

Mohammedanism, which had largely absorbed the
Formulation of
Church doctrine. Aristotelian principles, the Church, though at first bitterly
opposing them, finally found it impossible to suppress
them, and began to clothe her own doctrine in their dress. The greatest of
the scholastics began to study Aristotelianism, and soon made it the
effective weapon of the Church by reducing all human knowledge to a
finished Aristotelian system with theology at the top.

The Post-Aristotelian Schools of Philosophy.—But the harmonizing
attempt of Aristotle was fruitless. Like Socrates and Plato, he failed to
reconcile with the old and settled order the ever-expanding movement
toward individualism. Thus all efforts to control the individualistic and
disintegrating tendencies of the times were in vain, and the conquest of the
Greek states by Philip of Macedon (358-338 B. C.) was only symptomatic
of the complete collapse of corporate life and the inability to reconstruct it
successfully. All possibility of social unity disappeared, and philosophy no
longer considered the individual from the standpoint of membership in
society. It was occupied no further with the harmonization of the individual
and the state, but concerned itself with the welfare of the individual and the
art of living. Individualism was completely triumphant,
Triumph of
individualism. and education was considered simply as a means to
personal development or happiness, without regard to
one’s fellows. The new theories of life and education were formulated by
such schools of philosophy as the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics, which
kept themselves far removed from society. None of these ‘schools’ could be
so termed in the sense of offering an education, but rather in the modern
usage of a group of adherents to certain teachings. They spent their energy,
for the most part, in interpreting, elaborating, and lauding the original
teachings of the founders, and with them a stereotyped dogmatism took the
place of philosophy.

The Schools of Rhetoric.—But these schools were not the only outcome of
the teaching of the sophists. Just as they came about gradually from the
speculative tendencies of the sophists as developed through certain famous
philosophers, there likewise grew up more directly from the sophistic
efforts to train young men in rhetoric and public speaking a multitude of
rhetorical schools. In these a formal study was made of oratory and the

knowledge of the day. Their professed object was to
Formal study and
general knowledge.make successful men of the world, and, although they at
first included such reputable and influential schools as
that of Isocrates (436-338 B. C.), they laid little claim to teaching anything
solid or profound, much less to forming any philosophic habits. They
succeeded in spreading a popular education among a people that had lost all
hope of a political life, but they soon degenerated into the use of narrow and
formal methods. The later rhetoricians attempted to hasten oratorical
training and preparation for life, by teaching their pupils ready-made
speeches and dialogues, together with a general knowledge of current
questions. Nevertheless, these schools flourished for several centuries and
closely rivalled those of the philosophers.

The Hellenic Universities.—From these two classes of schools, the
philosophical and the rhetorical, the fame of Athens spread rapidly, and
from the fourth century B. C. onward the number of young men from all
over the civilized world who came there to study steadily increased. Before
the close of the century the old cadet training of Athens
Origin of
University of was united with this intellectual education, and there
Athens. sprang up a regular institution or university, which the
young Athenians and students from outside might attend.
Before long, the Hellenic world boasted other
Other universities.
universities, such as those at Rhodes, Pergamon,
Alexandria, and Rome. Until almost 300 A. D. Athens remained the chief
intellectual center of civilization, and attracted students from all parts of the
Roman Empire. Gradually, however, the higher education there tended
toward the study of rhetoric alone and artificiality grew apace. In
consequence, Alexandria came to displace Athens as the center of culture,
and her university became the leading one of the world. Here the various
philosophic and religious sects gathered to study and
Philosophy and
science at discuss, and the abstract Greek philosophy united with
Alexandria. the more concrete beliefs of the Orient, especially
Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Thus there
flourished here the various systems of religious philosophy known
collectively as ‘Hellenistic,’ such as Neopythagoreanism, Neomazdeism,
Philonism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism. Considerably before this, too,
there had developed at Alexandria the Ptolemaic theory of the universe.

Other noted investigations, like those of Euclid in geometry, Archimedes in
physics, Eratosthenes in astronomy, and Diophantus in algebra, also bore
witness to the intellectual activity of this university.

Extension of Hellenic Culture.—It can thus be seen that the political
downfall of Athens had only prepared the way for a larger
Spread through the
Orient intellectual influence. As Alexander extended his yoke
over one Eastern country after another, he had carried
with him all the culture of Greece, and within a century of his death the
whole Orient was dotted with Greek gymnasia, stadia, and theaters, and
saturated with Greek literature, art, philosophy, and education. Similarly
Rome, which had come somewhat into contact with Greece before
conquering her, had been tinctured with Greek life and learning; and, after
her absorption of Macedon and Greece, she fell under the
and the Roman
world. spiritual thrall of the subjugated people. The history of
Greek civilization and education was so intermingled
with the Roman that it can scarcely be distinguished from it. The Greek
schools of philosophy and rhetoric were continued in Rome, Roman youths
made up a great body of the attendance at the universities of Athens and
Alexandria, and the Roman emperors did much for the support and
extension of the work in these institutions. Hence from the Greeks have
developed some of the most advanced intellectual and æsthetic ideas that
civilization has known.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XII; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. III. See also Laurie, Pre-Christian
Education (Longmans, Green, 1900), pp. 208-318. Davidson, T., in his
Aristotle (Scribner, 1896), develops the periods of Greek education in
chronological order, and his Education of the Greek People (Appleton,
1903) gives the social setting of its development. A most scholarly and
brilliant work is Freeman, K. J., Schools of Hellas (Macmillan, 1907),
which is illustrated by vase-scenes and other reproductions of Greek
education. Bosanquet, B., The Education of the Young in Plato’s Republic
(Cambridge University Press, 1908), Nettleship, R. L., Theory of Greek
Education in Plato’s Republic (See Evelyn Abbott’s Hellenica, Longmans,

Green, 1908), and Burnet, J., Aristotle on Education (Cambridge University
Press) afford a good interpretation of the theorists mentioned; while Capes,
W. W., in the University Life in Ancient Athens (Harper, 1877), and Walden,
J. W., in the Universities of Ancient Greece (Scribner, 1909), furnish a
lively description of the students and professors.

CHAPTER III

THE EDUCATION OF THE ROMANS

OUTLINE

The contribution of the Romans to progress was largely due to their
absorption of Greek culture, but their primitive training had an
influence in itself. This was mostly civic and practical, and was given
informally in the family and the forum.

Through amalgamation with the Greek, Roman education maintained
three grades of schools: (1) the elementary school or ludus, (2) the
‘grammar’ school, and (3) the rhetorical school. Beyond the education
of these schools, a young Roman might attend a university.

Schools were gradually subsidized by the emperors, but education
eventually deteriorated into a formal qualification for senatorial rank.
The practical Romans, however, created a universal empire and legal
system, a universal religion, and other institutions for modern society.

Roman Education Amalgamated with Greek.—The name of Rome is
still suggestive of power and organization. These characteristics seem to
have been innate; but the significance of Roman development to the history
of progress and education was largely due to the fact that, in her spread over
the civilized world, the Eternal City amalgamated the Greek civilization
with her own. Until then her ideals of life, while effective
Until Hellenized,
Roman ideals were in conquest, had been narrow and little adapted to the
narrow. development of individuality or of cosmopolitanism.
Unconsciously realizing the need of broader ideals, she
absorbed those of Greece. But Rome could not be Hellenized without
making some contributions to the result from her own genius, and for that
reason it is important to learn something of Roman civilization and

education, crude as they were, before they came into contact with Greek
culture.

Early Education in Rome.—In the early days Rome was animated by
intense patriotism and love for military life, and felt that each citizen was
bound to merge his identity in that of the state. In the
Its civic and
practical aim. surrender of individuality they were, to be sure, not
unlike the Spartans, although they believed that this
subordination should be brought about voluntarily rather than by
compulsion of law and state organization. But, with such a love as theirs for
mere material achievement, the Athenian ideal of a full and harmonious
development of one’s whole nature could scarcely be expected to make any
appeal. They looked not for harmony, proportion, or grace, but for stern
utility. They were sedate, grave, and serious, and their education was
practical, prosaic, and utilitarian.

Until the Greek institutions began to be adopted, schools did not exist in
Rome, except possibly the ludus or elementary school. During this pristine
period education consisted in a practical training in Roman ideals and
everyday living conducted largely through the family. In
Informal training in
the family and in childhood the boys and girls alike were given a physical
public. and moral training by their mother, but, as the boy grew
older, he went more in the company of his father, and
learned efficiency in life informally through his example and that of the
older men, while the girl was taught at home by her mother. If the boy
belonged to a patrician family, he might acquire much knowledge
concerning Roman custom and law by hearing his father advise and aid the
family clients, or ‘dependents,’ and by attending banquets with him. He
might also receive an apprenticeship training from his parent or some other
older man in the profession of soldier, advocate, or statesman. In case he
was born in a less exalted station, he might learn his father’s occupation at
the farm or shop. The girl, whatever her social status, was trained by her
mother in the domestic arts, especially in spinning and weaving wool.
Through their parents children probably learned to read and write; and they
committed to memory stories of Roman heroes, ballads, martial and
religious songs, and the Twelve Tables of national laws, after these had been
codified (451 B. C.). Physical exercise was secured largely by games,

which were mostly in imitation of future occupations, and gymnastics were
employed simply as training for war. The usages of home and public
religion also played an important part in the education of the young
Romans, especially since almost every activity in life was presided over by
some deity, whom it was necessary to propitiate when engaging in it.

Thus education in early Rome was practical, and, to some
Practical and
occupational extent, occupational. It was intended to produce
character. efficiency as fathers, citizens, and soldiers. It consisted in
training the youths to be healthy and strong in mind and
body, and sedate and simple in their habits; to reverence the gods, their
parents, the laws, and institutions; and to be courageous in war, and familiar
with the traditional agriculture, or the conduct of some business. It did
produce a nation of warriors and loyal citizens, but it inevitably tended to
make them calculating, selfish, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious. They
never possessed either lofty ideals or enthusiasm. Their training was best
adapted to a small state, and became unsatisfactory when they had spread
over the entire Italian peninsula. The golden age of valor and stern virtue
had then largely departed, and they began unconsciously to seek a more
universal culture. While such a people regarded the Greeks as visionary,
just as the Greeks looked upon them as barbarians, they felt instinctively
that only by absorption of the Hellenic ideals could their cosmopolitan
ambitions be carried out. On the other hand, it was through the organization
which the Romans were able to furnish, that the great ideals formulated by
the Greeks were destined to be rendered effective and to become a matter of
value and concern to civilization ever since.

The Absorption of Greek Culture.—There was a gradual infiltration of
Greek culture into Rome from very early days. This received a great
impulse through the conquests of Alexander (334-323 B.
Spread through
Alexander and C.) and the absorption of Macedon by Rome (168 B. C.),
Roman conquests. but it was not until about half a century after Greece itself
had become a Roman province (146 B. C.), that the
Greek educational ideals and institutions can be said to have been
completely absorbed by Rome. This new type of education was thus well
established early in the first century B. C. It may be said to have remained
almost unmodified until toward the end of the second century A. D., when

political conditions at Rome became most unstable and the period of
degeneracy set in. During these three centuries of Hellenized Roman
education, three grades of schools resulted from the amalgamation. They
were the (1) ludus or school of the litterator, as the lowest school was
called; (2) the ‘grammar’ school, taught by a
The schools
resulting. grammaticus or litteratus; and (3) the schools of rhetoric
and oratory, which furnished a somewhat higher
education.

The Ludus.—The ludus, or lowest school, may possibly have existed
before the process of Hellenization even began, but if it did, it must have
been intended simply to supplement the more informal training of the
home. Whenever originated, it probably taught at first
Its content and
methods. only reading, writing, and rudimentary calculation, as in
the family, through the medium of historical anecdotes,
ballads, religious songs, and the Twelve Tables. But as the Greek influence
crept in more and more, the literary content was somewhat extended. About
the middle of the third century B. C., Livius Andronicus translated the
Odyssey into Latin; and a number of epics, dramas, and epigrams were soon
composed after Greek models. These works, in whole or part, were
introduced into the curricula of the ludi and by the beginning of the first
century B. C., the Twelve Tables had been displaced by the Latinized
Odyssey of Andronicus. The methods of instruction were memoriter and
imitative. The names and alphabetic order of the letters were first taught
without any indication of their significance or even shape, and all possible
combinations of syllables were committed before any words were learned.
Reading and writing were then taught by dictation, and, in tracing the letters
on wax-tablets with the stylus (Fig. 5), the hand of the pupil was at first
guided by the teacher. Calculation was learned by counting on the fingers,
by means of pebbles, or upon the abacus, and eventually sums were worked
upon the tablets.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 5.—School materials from wall paintings: (a) Wax tablet
and capsa, containing rolls, or books. (b) Three stili,
capsa, and roll leaning against it. (c) Wax tablet, with
stilus tied to it.

Fig. 6.—Scene at a ludus or Roman elementary school, taken
from a fresco found at Herculaneum.

Methods so devoid of interest were naturally accompanied by severe
discipline. The rod, lash, and whip seem to have been in
Discipline and
teachers. frequent use, and the names ordinarily applied to
schoolmasters in Latin literature are suggestive of
harshness and brutality. Moreover, a fresco found at Herculaneum depicts a
boy held over the shoulders of another, with the master beating the victim
upon the bare back (Fig. 6). Under these circumstances, no real
qualifications were required of the teacher, and his social standing was low.
The Greek custom of having the boy accompanied to and from school by a
slave that was otherwise incapacitated by age or physical
Slaves to
accompany pupils. disability soon came to be imitated by the Romans. When
a special building was employed for the school, it was
Buildings. usually a mere booth or veranda, and the pupils sat on the
floor or upon stones.

Grammar Schools.—The ‘grammar’ school grew out of the increasing
literary work of the ludus. But, while offering a more advanced course, it
would seem to belong in part at least to the elementary stage of education,
especially as its work was never sharply divided from that of the ludus. The
young Roman might attend both a Greek and a Latin grammar school, but,
in case he did, usually went first to the former. The curriculum in each
consisted, according to Quintilian, of ‘the art of speaking
Curriculum.
correctly’ and ‘the interpretation of the poets,’ or, in other
words, of a training in grammar and literature. ‘Grammar’ may, however,
have included some knowledge of philology and derivations, as well as drill
on the parts of speech, inflections, syntax, and prosody, and practice in
composition and paragraphing. The literary training was obtained by
writing paraphrases of the best authors, textual and literary criticism,
commentaries, and exercises in diction and verse-writing. Some other
studies, like arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, geography, and music may
also have been added in time, from the suggestions of Plato, but the
Romans naturally gave them a practical bearing. Some gymnastics, mostly
for military training, were often in the course. The
Methods and
discipline. methods in the grammar schools were somewhat better
than those of the ludus, but the commentary of the
teacher on the text was usually taken down verbatim by the pupil. The
discipline, in consequence, was not much in advance of that of the lower

schools. But the accommodations for these secondary
Buildings.
schools were decidedly superior, and the buildings not
only possessed suitable seats for the pupils and teacher, but were even
adorned with paintings and sculpture.

Rhetorical Schools.—The ‘rhetorical’ schools were a development of work
in debate that had gradually grown up in the grammar schools. The earliest
of these institutions at Rome were Greek, but by the first century B. C.,
there had arisen a number in which Latin was used. While they afforded a
legal and forensic training, and seem more professional in
Professional, but
broad training. spirit than the grammar schools, they were by no means
narrow. The orator was for the Roman the typical man of
culture and education, and he was supposed not only to have been trained in
eloquence and law and history, but to possess wide learning, grace, culture,
and knowledge of human emotions, sound judgment, and good memory.
Besides a training in oratory, these schools furnished a linguistic and
literary education of some breadth. They may be considered as belonging
partly to the secondary and partly to the higher stage of education. The
youths were exercised first in declamation on ethical and political subjects,
which would bring in fine distinctions in Roman law and ethics, and later
they were given practice in three types of speeches,—deliberative, judicial,
and panegyric. Attention was given to all the various factors in making a
successful oration: the matter, arrangement, style, memorizing, and
delivery.

Universities.—When the young Roman had completed his course at a
rhetorical school, he might, if he were ambitious, go to the university at
Athens, Alexandria, or Rhodes for a higher training.
Spread throughout
the empire. Later, a university also sprang up at Rome, and before
long these institutions spread throughout the empire. The
Greek influence caused a large number of these institutions to be
established in the East, but some were also located in the West. The latter
gave more emphasis to practical subjects. In several instances the
universities found their nucleus in one of the many libraries that were
started with books brought from the sacking of Greece and Asia Minor.

Subsidization of Education.—Thus, through the adoption of the
institutions of the Greeks, Roman education became thoroughly Hellenized.
Although all the types of schools spread everywhere in the empire, there
was, of course, no such thing as a real school system, except as the
government gradually came to subsidize all schools. This the different
emperors accomplished in various ways,—by
Imperial control of
schools. contributing to school support, paying a salary to certain
teachers, or granting them exemption from taxation and
military service, or offering scholarships to a given number of pupils. As a
result, schools came to be established in many cases for the purpose of
getting these special privileges for the teachers, rather than for promoting
education. To stop these abuses, the emperor in 425 A. D. decreed that he
had the sole authority to establish schools, and that a penalty would be laid
upon anyone else assuming this prerogative. In this way the schools came
fully into the hands of the imperial government, and the basis for the idea of
public education was laid for the first time in history.

Decay of Education.—Before this, however, Roman education had
deteriorated. With the political and moral decay that were obvious after the
second century A. D., it became a mere form and mark of
Formal and
superficial the aristocracy. The training in oratory was continued,
character. because it was a necessary qualification for entering the
senatorial class, but it had lost its real function, since
there was no longer any occasion for oratory when the emperor dominated
all the government and law. It was not intended to furnish a training of any
value in life, and the careful literary preparation was more and more
shirked. While the grammarians and rhetoricians were still held in high
esteem, they contented themselves with mere display, and wandered from
town to town more for the purpose of entertaining than of teaching.
Glittering phrases, epigrams, and other artificialities took the place of
instruction and argument.

Influence of Roman Education.—But the Roman education and
civilization had left their impress upon the world. This was accomplished
by the practical nature of the Romans, and by their ability to make abstract
ideals concrete and embody them in institutions that have been useful to
civilization and progress. Through them was created the idea of a universal

empire, which has been influential throughout the world’s history. Similarly,
the concept of law originating with the Greek
Institutions
furnished for the philosophers became in the hands of the Romans the
ideals of Judea and great system of principles that underlies and guides all
Greece. our present civilization. And it was the Roman genius for
organization that institutionalized a despised religious
sect and expanded it into the position of the greatest world religion. If
Judaism furnished the world with exalted religious ideals, and if from
Hellenism came striking intellectual and æsthetic concepts, the institutions
for realizing these ideals originated with Rome.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XIII; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. IV. Interesting brief monographs on the
subject are Clarke, G., Education of Children at Rome (Macmillan, 1896),
and Wilkins, A. S., Roman Education, (Cambridge University Press, 1905).
See also the treatment in Laurie, Pre-Christian Education (Longmans,
Green, 1900), pp. 319-436.

CHAPTER IV

THE EDUCATION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS

OUTLINE

Christianity accomplished much in the reform of the degraded Roman
society. The earliest education of the Christians came through their
‘otherworldly’ life, but actual schools, called ‘catechumenal,’ before
long furnished a moral and religious training.

After the amalgamation of Christianity with Græco-Roman
philosophy, ‘catechetical’ schools furnished a higher training. When
higher education came to be utilized by the bishops for training their
clergy, institutions known as ‘episcopal’ or ‘cathedral’ schools were
founded.

Later, although opposition grew up among the Christians to the culture
of Greece and Rome, its impress was found to have been left upon the
doctrines and organization of Christianity.

The Ideals of Early Christianity.—The actual social conditions amid
which the religion of Christ was born, and which it was destined to reform,
were most degraded. The Roman world had become sunk
Impotence of
Roman and other in vice and corruption. The Roman virtues of patriotism,
ideals. bravery, and service to the state had largely disappeared
with the development of the empire, and were impotent
in checking the widespread depravity. Nor could the lofty Greek thought
accomplish much, since it was too intellectual and philosophic to touch the
masses. The debased Eastern religions, which Rome had admitted in her
easy-going skepticism, were still less productive of good. While the more
philosophic forms of Judaism and the Roman development of Stoicism
tended to raise the tone of morals and pave the way for Christianity, not
even these forces could have accomplished a successful reform in Roman

society, without the stimulus and wide appeal of the
Universal appeal of
Christianity. Christian teachings. Christianity was the ethical and
universal religion needed as a leaven. Its truths were
based on faith rather than understanding, and its appeal was to the
instinctive promptings and emotions rather than to the intellect. This made
it democratic and enabled it to reach the masses, for everybody can feel and
have faith, even where he cannot understand.

Early Christian Life as an Education.—Thus it came about that, while
the earliest Christians were without schools of their own and were largely
illiterate, their religion itself served as an education. They were practically
deprived of intellectual development, but they received moral training of a
very high order. The very dishonor and unpopularity of the Christian
religion, and the segregation of their Church membership,
Segregation.
gave the Christian life itself all the effect of a species of
schooling. The early Christians showed an extreme reaction to the vicious
morals of the time, and endeavored to cultivate the higher ideals inculcated
by the teachings of Christ. They had gathered from the statements of the
Master that he would soon return and this world would come to an end.
They, therefore, concerned themselves entirely with a
‘Otherworldliness.’
preparation for ‘Jerusalem the golden’ and ‘the life
everlasting,’ and the ideal of this most primitive Christian training may be
described as ‘otherworldly.’

Catechumenal Schools.—Early in the second century, however, when the
Church began to extend itself rapidly, it seemed necessary to insist upon
some sort of formal instruction as preliminary to Church membership. It
was also deemed wise to fix a period of probation after the profession of
one’s faith in Christ, in order that informers might not be admitted to the
services, or the Church disgraced by apostasy or the lapses of those who
had not well considered the step. These demands were
Cause of their
organization. met by the gradual institution of popular instruction in
Christian principles for the Jewish and pagan proselytes,
who were known as catechumens. While some effort was made to lift the
pupils of these ‘catechumenal’ schools from the bondage of ignorance, they
were primarily trained in the things needful for their souls’ salvation, and
the ideal of Christian education remained prevailingly ‘otherworldly.’ The

instruction was carried on in the portico or other special
Elementary content.
portion of the church; and consisted in moral and
religious teachings, reading and memorizing the Scriptures, together with
some training in early psalmody. The course usually lasted three years, and
while some distinction was made between the general division of
catechumens and those almost ready for baptism, there is little ground for
supposing that the schools were divided into actual classes. The meetings in
the church were held several times a week, or even every day.

Amalgamation of Christianity with Græco-Roman Philosophy.—But
while the Christian ideals and training were developing and crystallizing,
the Greek philosophy in its Roman form was being continued and
expanded. This movement has been seen to be very
Græco-Roman
training a worldly different from early Christianity in its general purpose. It
one. concerned itself chiefly with life in this world. The
problem it attempted to solve was how one should live so
as to get the most satisfaction out of life. The Hellenized Roman schools
may, therefore, be accounted as ‘worldly’ as the Christian schools were
‘otherworldly’ in their aim. A general feeling of this marked difference in
purpose and organization between Christianity and the contemporaneous
Græco-Roman culture was destined to cause an opposition to pagan
learning to spring up among the Christians. But for two
Union of the
worldly and or three centuries this is scarcely noticeable, especially in
otherworldly,— the Eastern empire, where it was felt that philosophy was,
like Christianity, a search after truth; and, as far as it
went, confirmed the Bible. There was even a tendency to unite the two
movements. As the new religion spread throughout the Roman world, and
was compelled to defend itself against charges of immorality, atheism, and
treason, the educated converts attempted to set forth the Christian teachings
in terms of Greek thought, and to solve speculative problems that had never
been considered by Jesus and his disciples. The first Hellenizing Christians
are known as Apologists, since their efforts were directed
Apologists
toward reconciling Christianity with the Græco-Roman
philosophy. In general, they mingled Stoicism with the teachings of Jesus.
Later, other Hellenistic philosophers unified Christian doctrine with the
principles of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. Perhaps the most extreme of
these philosophic positions within Christianity was a combination with

Platonism known as Gnosticism, which was intended to
and Gnostics.
be a sort of esoteric knowledge and to show the relation
of Christianity to other religions and to the universe.

Catechetical and Episcopal or Cathedral Schools.—In this way, during
the second and third centuries, all the Christians at Alexandria, which had
become the great seat of Hellenistic philosophy, had their theology tinctured
with Greek thought. Before long, a sort of theological, or ‘catechetical’
school, was gradually organized at this center, to counteract the heathen
schools there and to afford higher instruction for Christian teachers and
leaders. This school had no building of its own, and the
Pupils in the school
at Alexandria students met at the teacher’s house, but they were able to
allowed to study all take advantage of the facilities at the University of
Greek subjects. Alexandria. In addition to a thorough training in the
Bible, the pupils were allowed to study all types of Greek
philosophy, except Epicureanism, the whole range of sciences, classical
Greek literature, grammar, rhetoric, and other higher subjects of the pagan
schools, but from a different point of view. Thus the Græco-Roman and the
Christian movements had formed an alliance in education, and in this
catechetical school we find an attempted union of the ‘otherworldly’ ideal
with the ‘worldly.’

The best known heads of this school at Alexandria were Clement (150-215)
and Origen (185-253). They were among the most noted of the Eastern
Fathers in the philosophic interpretation of Christianity, and their work
contributed not a little to heretical doctrine. Origen may even have been
expelled for heresy. At any rate, he opened a new school of the same sort at
Cæsarea, where he was kindly received. Other catechetical schools sprang
up rapidly at Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis, and elsewhere
Other catechetical
schools. throughout the East. Later the accession of the followers
of Nestorius, whose Hellenized theology had in 431 been
proscribed by the Church at the Council of Ephesus, very greatly increased
the importance of these cities as intellectual centers. In addition to the
translations already there, the Nestorian Christians accumulated a larger
range of the original Greek treatises on philosophy, science, and medicine.

But before this, higher training of the Hellenic type came
Bishops start
to be regularly used by the bishops in training their
Hellenic schools for
their clergy. clergy, and promotion in the Church began to depend
upon having had this education. So higher schools of this
sort were gradually instituted in every bishopric at the see city, and became
known eventually as ‘episcopal’ or ‘bishop’s’ schools, or, from their
location at the bishop’s church, as ‘cathedral’ schools. These cathedral
schools became the most important educational institutions of the Middle
Ages. From them were derived all the schools of Western Europe, but the
bishop soon became too busy to attend to them himself and was forced to
commit them to various officials. Thus they developed in time into at least
three types,—the ‘grammar’ school, taught by one of the cathedral canons,
known as the scholasticus; the ‘song’ or music school, taught by the cantor
or precentor; and the ‘chorister’s’ school, which offered a combination of
the training in the two other schools. Thus the cathedral schools virtually
took the place of the old pagan schools supported by the Roman emperors.

Influence of Græco-Roman Culture upon Christianity.—However, by
the century after the foundation of the catechetical school at Alexandria, the
Christians had begun to grow suspicious of Græco-
Growth of
opposition to the Roman culture and the ‘worldly’ ideal in education. Even
Græco-Roman the Eastern or Greek Fathers of the Church appear to
culture. have cooled considerably in their attitude toward
philosophy, and the Western or Latin Fathers were more
pronounced in their opposition. Roman Christians could not forget the
immorality of those who had been connected with this culture, nor the
abuse and insults that these pagans had heaped upon them. They felt, too,
that the one great mission of the Church was ethical, and that Christ’s
second coming was at hand, and that all philosophy and learning were
somewhat impertinent.

Nevertheless, despite this growth of opposition to pagan philosophy,
primitive Christianity could not endure in its simplicity after it had been in
contact with the advanced intellectual concepts of the Greeks, as modified
by the organizing genius of the Romans. Both Greece and Rome left a
permanent impress upon Christianity; and, though dead, they yet live in the
Christian Church. The influence of Greek philosophy is seen in the

formulation of a system of Christian doctrine. This
But great influence
of Greece and appears in the development of the Apostles’ Creed during
Rome upon the second century, in the selection of a canon of sacred
Christian doctrinewritings or New Testament during the third century, and
and Church
organization. still more in the Nicene Creed (325), which was not
formulated until Christianity had been largely Hellenized.
Similarly, the Greek tendency to attribute universal validity to their sacred
writings, and the pomp, ceremonies, and mysteries of the Hellenic worship,
are more or less apparent in the various ecclesiastical tenets and usages. On
the other hand, the Roman concepts of administration appear in the
organization of the Church, which seems to have closely paralleled the
Roman civil polity. By the third century priests and bishops had largely
come to be similarly located, and to correspond in control, to the Roman
district and city magistrates respectively. And in 445 the recognition of the
supremacy of the Bishop of Rome established a visible head of the entire
Church, corresponding to the position of the emperor on the civic side.

Rise of the Monastic Schools.—Thus it has been seen how the two great
movements of Græco-Roman culture and Christian teaching arose
independently, in time united and later separated, although, after separation,
the Christian doctrines were somewhat affected by their long association
with pagan philosophy. Eventually the pagan schools were suppressed by
the edict of Justinian in 529 A. D., and the Christian education was left
alone in the field. It then found an additional means of
Reversion to
otherworldliness. expression in the ‘monastic’ schools, in which there was
naturally a tendency to revert to an ascetic or
‘otherworldly’ ideal, and to leave intellectual attainments largely out of
consideration. But these monastic institutions are to be grouped with
mediævalism and belong more distinctly to the next chapter.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XII; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 221-243. For the moral effect of
Christianity, see Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals (Appleton,
1869), vol. II, pp. 1-100. Other places in the chapter will be illumined by
reading Ayer, J. C., Jr., Catechumenal Schools and Catechetical Schools

(Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vol. I); Dill, D., Roman Society in the
Last Century of the Western Empire (Macmillan, 1899), especially book V;
Hatch, E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian
Church (Hibbert Lectures, 1888, Williams, London, 1891); Hodgson, G.,
Primitive Christian Education (Clark, Edinburgh, 1906); and Leach, A. F.,
Bishop’s Schools and Cathedral Schools (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education,
vol. I).

PART II
THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER V

THE MONASTIC EDUCATION

OUTLINE

During the Middle Ages the German hordes absorbed ancient
civilization under the authoritative guidance of the Church, and the
chief means of leavening the barbarian lump was found in the
cathedral and monastic schools.

Monasteries grew up to counteract the prevailing worldliness. To keep
the monks busy, Benedict prescribed the copying of manuscripts, and
this literary work rendered schools necessary. In these monastic
schools were taught the ‘seven liberal arts’ by catechetical methods.

Thus monasticism helped preserve learning and education, although it
was somewhat hostile to the classics and science.

The Middle Ages as a Period of Assimilation and Repression.—The
Middle Ages may be regarded as an era of assimilation and of repression.
On the one hand, the rude German hordes, who had by the sixth century
everywhere taken possession of the decadent ancient world, were enabled
during this period to rise gradually to such a plane of intelligence and
achievement that they could absorb the Greek, Roman,
Absorption of
Greek, Roman and and Christian civilization, and become its carriers to
Christian modern times. On the other hand, that this absorption
civilization. might take place, it was necessary that the individual
should conform to the model set, and it was inevitable
that a bondage to authority, convention, and institutions should ensue.

The main power in effecting this subservience on the part
Authoritative
attitude of the of mediæval society was the Christian Church. For it was
Church. but natural during the period of assimilation that the
Church, which had become completely organized and
unlimited in power, should stand as the chief guide and schoolmaster of the
Germanic hosts. By the decree of Justinian in 529 A. D., which closed the
pagan schools and marks the beginning of the Middle Ages, Christian
education was left without a rival. Hence the cathedral and monastic
schools became almost the sole means of leavening the barbarian lump.
Contrary to the view commonly accepted, the educational activities of the
cathedral institutions were more important and general than those of the
monastic schools. But the former have already been somewhat discussed,
and so much relating to the course and services of the latter will also apply
to them that we may now turn to a detailed description of the monastic
schools.

The Evolution and Nature of Monasticism.—To understand these
schools, it will be necessary to examine the movement out of which they
arose. Monasticism grew up through the corruption in Roman society and
the desire of those within the Church for a deeper religious life. Christianity
was no longer confined to small extra-social groups meeting secretly, but
was represented in all walks of society, and mingled with the world. It had
become thoroughly secularized, and even the clergy had
Reaction to
prevailing vice. in many instances yielded to the prevailing worldliness
and vice.

Under these circumstances there were Christians who felt that the only hope
for salvation rested in fleeing from the world and its temptations and taking
refuge in an isolated life of asceticism and devotion. This led eventually to
the foundation of monasteries, in which the monks lived
Hermits and
monasteries. apart in separate cells, but met for meals, prayers,
communion, and counsel. Monasticism started in Egypt,
but soon spread into Syria and Palestine, and then into Greece, Italy, and
Gaul. But in the West monasticism gradually adopted
Monasticism in the
West. more active pursuits and milder discipline, and the monks

turned to the cultivation of the soil and the preservation of literature.

Benedict’s ‘Rule’ and the Multiplication of Manuscripts.—These
monastic activities were especially crystallized and promoted by the
Benedictine ‘rule.’ This was a code formulated by St. Benedict in 529 for
his monastery at Monte Cassino in Southwest Italy, and it was generally
adopted by the monasteries of Western Europe. In the forty-eighth chapter
of the ‘rule’ he commanded that the monks each day
Manual labor and
reading required. engage in manual labor for at least seven hours and in
systematic reading for at least two hours. The
requirement of daily reading led to the collection and reproduction of
manuscripts, and each monastery soon had a scriptorium, or ‘writing-
room,’ in one end of the building (Fig. 7). Most of the works copied were of
a religious nature and were limited in number, but the monks were
occasionally occupied with the Latin classics, and they also became the
authors of some original literature, which included
Resulting literary
activities. histories of the Church, the monasteries, and the times, as
well as works upon religious topics.

Amalgamation of and Irish Christianity.—This preservation of learning
and development of literature was especially apparent in
Especial
preservation of the monasteries of England It came about through the
learning in English amalgamation at the Council of Whitby, in 664, of the
monasteries. Roman Church in England, with Irish Christianity, which
had preserved an unusually high order of learning after its
isolation. An immense enthusiasm for the Church, culture, and literature of
Rome resulted from this merging of the rival organizations, and the English
monasteries, such as Jarrow and Wearmouth, and cathedral schools, like
York, became the great educational centers for Europe.

The Organization of the Monastic Schools.—The literary work of the
monasteries soon led to the establishment of regular schools within their
walls (Fig. 8). The course in these monastic schools may
Length of course.
often have lasted eight or ten years, as boys of ten or even
less were sometimes received, and no one could become a regular member
of the order before he was eighteen. By the ninth century the schools
sometimes also admitted pupils who never expected to
Types of pupils.

enter the order. These latter were called externi in distinction to the oblati,
who were preparing to become monks. Some training was also given
women in convents for nuns, such as that established by the sister of
Benedict.

Fig. 7.—A monk in the scriptorium.

Fig. 8.—A monastic school.

The ‘Seven Liberal Arts’ as the Curriculum.—The curriculum of the
monastic schools was at first elementary and narrow. It included only
reading, in order to study the Bible; writing, to copy the sacred books; and
calculation, for the sake of computing Church festivals. But after a while
the classical learning was gradually introduced in that dry and condensed
form of the ‘seven liberal arts’, which was also used by the cathedral
schools. This mediæval canon of studies was a gradual evolution from
Græco-Roman days. The discrimination of these liberal subjects may be
said to have begun with Plato, whose educational scheme included a higher
group of studies, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy;
and during the later days of Greece and Rome these ‘liberal’ subjects of
Plato were combined with the ‘practical’ studies of the sophists,—grammar,
rhetoric, and dialectic. These ‘seven liberal arts’ were definitely fixed
during the fifth and sixth centuries A. D., through several
Evolution and
scope of the trivium treatises by such writers as Martianus Capella, Boëthius,
and quadrivium. and Cassiodorus; and the grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic
eventually became classed as the trivium or lower studies,
and the arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy as the quadrivium or

higher (Fig. 9). While this curriculum was not a broad one, the scope was
much wider than would be supposed. ‘Grammar’ was an introduction to
literature, ‘rhetoric’ included some knowledge of law and history, ‘dialectic’
paved the way for metaphysics, ‘arithmetic’ extended beyond mere
calculation, ‘geometry’ embraced geography and surveying, ‘music’
covered a broad course in theory, and ‘astronomy’ comprehended some
physics and advanced mathematics.

The Methods and Texts.—The general method of teaching in the monastic
schools was that of question and answer. As copies of the various books
were scarce, the instructor often resorted to dictation, explaining the
meaning as he read, and the pupils took the passage down
Dictation and
memorizing. upon tablets and committed it. The reading books
preparatory to the study of literature, many of which are
still extant, were generally arranged by each teacher, and careful attention
was given to the etymological and literary study of the authors to be read.
As to texts, the leading works upon grammar were at first
Donatus and
Priscian, the elementary work of Donatus (fourth century) and the
more advanced treatise of Priscian (sixth century), but by
the thirteenth century there had sprung up a series of simplified grammars,
which, for the sake of memorizing, were often written in verse. As rhetoric
was no longer much concerned with declamation, Cicero and Quintilian
were rarely used as texts, but various mediæval treatises upon official
letters, legal documents, and forms came into use. Dialectic was studied
through translations of the Organon of Aristotle, Euclid
Aristotle, Euclid,
Boëthius, and furnished the text on geometry, the works of Boëthius
Ptolemy. were generally used for arithmetic and music, and in
astronomy adaptations of the treatises of Aristotle and
Ptolemy became the texts.

Effect upon Civilization of the Monastic Schools.—Thus monasticism
accomplished not a little for civilization. While the works
Maintenance of
classical literature produced in the monasteries were uncritical and
and education. superstitious, they compose most of our historical
documents and sources in the Middle Ages. And,
although monastic schools were decidedly hostile to classical literature as
representing the temptations of the world, and at all times their rigid

orthodoxy prevented every possibility of science and the development of
individualism, they, together with the cathedral schools, preserved a
considerable amount of Græco-Roman culture. Without the cathedral and
monastic schools, the Latin and Greek manuscripts and learning could
scarcely have survived and have been available at the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, History of Education during the Middle Ages and the Transition to
Modern Times (Macmillan, 1910), chaps. I-II; Monroe, Text-book
(Macmillan, 1905), pp. 243-274. For the evolution of the ascetic life, see
Lecky, History of European Morals (Appleton, 1869), vol. II, pp. 101-274;
for the development of monasticism, Taylor, H. O., The Classical Heritage
of the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1913), chap. VII, and Wishart, A. W., A
Short History of Monks and Monasticism (Brandt, Trenton, 1902). The
contribution of Irish monasticism is shown in Healy, J., Insula Sanctorum et
Doctorum (Sealy, Dublin, 1897), and Zimmer, H., The Irish Element in
Mediæval Culture (Putnam, 1891). Succinct articles on Abbey Schools,
Bishop’s Schools, Church Schools, and Cloister Schools by Leach, A. F.
(Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vols. I and II), furnish the most accurate
ideas of monastic education as far as it is known. An account of the
monastic libraries is given in Clark, J. W., Libraries in the Mediæval and
Renaissance Monasteries (Macmillan and Bowes, Cambridge, 1894), and
Putnam, G. H., Books and Their Makers during the Middle Ages (Putnam,
1896). The best account of The Seven Liberal Arts in English is that by
Abelson, P. (Columbia University, Teachers College Contributions, No. 11,
1906).

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE’S REVIVAL OF EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Learning and schools had by the eighth century been sadly disrupted,
and, to restore them, Charlemagne invited Alcuin of York to become
his adviser in education. Alcuin induced Charlemagne to conduct
higher education at the Palace School, and to improve the cathedral,
monastic, and parish schools.

Even after Alcuin retired from the active direction of education, he
continued his educational influence, but he became set and narrow. A
broader spirit, however, appeared in his pupils, and intellectual
stagnation never again prevailed.

Condition of Education in the Eighth Century.—In the course of the
seventh and eighth centuries mediæval education met
Decay of learning.
with considerable retrogression. The learning of the sixth
century was disappearing, the copying of manuscripts had almost ceased,
and the cathedral and monastic schools had been sadly disrupted. The
secular clergy, monks, nobility, and others who might have been expected to
be trained, at times seem even to have lost the art of writing, although the
leading churchmen must generally have maintained their knowledge of
ecclesiastical Latin and some acquaintance with the classical authors and
various compilations of the seven liberal arts. Just before this time the
Franks had succeeded in establishing a supremacy over the other barbarian
tribes and had spread their rule through what is now France, Belgium, and
Holland, and most of Western Germany. Under a dynasty of vigorous kings,
they now drove back the Moslems, conquered the Lombards and Saxons,
and subdued the Slavs and Bohemians, and finally
Charlemagne
Charlemagne (742-814) even planned to re-establish the
Western Roman Empire under his sovereignty. This monarch greatly

strengthened and centralized his dominions by a number of improvements
in external administration, but, even before his recognition as emperor by
the pope (800), he had realized that a genuine unity of his people could be
brought about only through a much more effective and universal education.
He had a keen sense of the unfortunate educational situation, and made
every effort to improve it. To assist him in his endeavors,
and Alcuin.
in 782 he called Alcuin (735-804) from the headship of
the famous cathedral school at York (see p. 56) to be his chief adviser in
education.

Higher Education at the Palace School.—Through this noted scholar
Charlemagne proceeded to revive the cathedral, monastic, and parish
schools, and to increase the importance of the ‘Palace School.’ At this latter
school the great king, all his family, and many of his relatives and
intellectual friends studied under the Saxon educator.
Methods and
curriculum. Alcuin must, however, have used a more discursive and
less memoriter method with his adult students than the
formal catechetical plan employed in instructing the youth. Among the
subjects taught were grammar, including some study of the Latin poets and
the writings of the Church Fathers, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic,
astronomy, and theology, but Alcuin appears to have had but little command
of the Greek learning. Charlemagne himself seems to have become
proficient in Latin and other languages, but, in spite of strenuous efforts, he
began too late in life to train his hand to write.

Educational Improvement in the Cathedral, Monastic, and Parish
Schools.—With the coöperation of Alcuin, Charlemagne also did
everything in his power to increase facilities and improve standards in the
existing types of schools. In 787 he issued an educational
Capitularies to
abbots and bishops. ‘capitulary’ or decree to the bishops and abbots, “urging
diligence in the pursuit of learning and the selection of
teachers for this work who are able, willing, and zealous to learn
themselves and to teach others.” Two years later he wrote a more urgent
capitulary to the bishops and abbots, in which he specified the subjects to
be taught in the cathedral and monastic schools and the care to be taken in
teaching them. Schools seem to have been everywhere established or
revived in the various cathedrals, monasteries, and villages, and the

instruction in several places became famous. All these schools came to offer
at least a complete elementary course, and some added considerable work
in higher education. Reading, writing, computation,
Course in the
monastic, cathedral, singing, and the Scriptures were taught first, but, beyond
and village schools. this, instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic was
often given, and at the more noted cathedral and monastic
schools the quadrivium also appeared in the course. The schools in the
villages, under the care of the parish priests, taught only the rudiments, the
Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Psalms. Tuition was
Free tuition.
free in all schools for those intending to become monks
or priests, but for the higher work a small fee was sometimes paid by the
laity. It seems to have been generally intended that education should be
gratuitous and open to all. A letter of the Bishop of Orleans required it of
his clergy; and through a capitulary in 802 Charlemagne strove to make it
compulsory.

Alcuin’s Educational Work at Tours.—After fourteen years of strenuous
service, Alcuin retired from the active headship of the
After retirement
Alcuin’s influence educational system to the abbacy of the monastery at
continued, but he Tours. But even here his educational work did not cease.
became narrow. He soon established a model house of learning and
education, whither flocked the most brilliant youths in the
empire, and since they rapidly became prominent as teachers and
churchmen, his influence upon the schools remained fully as marked as
before. He also wrote a number of educational works, mostly on the seven
liberal arts, and had a large correspondence about education with kings and
the higher clergy. Alcuin, however, was by nature conservative, and with his
retirement he became decidedly set and narrow. His fear of dialectic and the
more advanced views of certain Irish scholars is almost ludicrous, and his
repudiation of the classic poets, even his former favorite, Vergil, is pathetic.

Rabanus Maurus, Erigena, and Others Concerned in the Revival.—
Fortunately, Alcuin’s pupils, who at his death occupied practically all
positions of educational importance, retained his broader
His pupils retained
his broader spirit. spirit. This was true in particular of Rabanus Maurus
(776-856), whose leadership caused the monastic school
at Fulda to become the great center of learning. Rabanus wrote even more

prolifically than Alcuin upon grammar, language, and theology, but was not
afraid to emphasize the study of classic literature or the new training in
dialectic. He also greatly expanded the mathematical subjects of the
curriculum, and tended to ascribe all phenomena to natural laws. Rabanus,
in his turn, influenced a large number of pupils, and a further impetus was
given to the movement by a cross-fertilization of Irish learning, which was
also introduced, especially through the mastership of Joannes Scotus
Erigena (810-876) at the Palace School.

Thus during the ninth century and the first half of the
Permanent effects
of the revival. tenth there arose, through the initiative of Charlemagne
and Alcuin, a marked revival in education, and for several
generations the cathedral and monastic schools enthusiastically fostered
education and learning. Curricula were expanded, and many famous
scholars appeared. While, owing to the weakness of Charlemagne’s
successors and the attacks of the Northmen, learning gradually faded once
more, intellectual stagnation never again prevailed. Through the revival of
the great Frankish monarch, classical learning had to some extent been
recalled to continental Europe from its insular asylum in the extreme West.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. III; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 274-279. Read also Gaskoin, C. J. C., Alcuin,
His Life and His Work (Clay, London, 1904), or West, A. F., Alcuin and the
Rise of Christian Schools (Scribner, 1892), and Mullinger, J. B., The
Schools of Charles the Great (Longmans, London, 1877).

CHAPTER VII

MOSLEM LEARNING AND EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Moslemism amalgamated in Syria with Greek philosophy and science,
and the Moslem cities there became renowned for their learning.

The masses of the Moslems were suspicious of the Greek learning,
however, and those who had absorbed the Hellenized philosophy were
driven from the Orient into Spain, where they founded Moorish
colleges.

The Moslems thus stimulated learning in the Christian schools, and
introduced Aristotle once more, but, after bringing learning back,
Moslemism itself reverted to its primitive stage.

The Hellenization of Moslemism.—One of the most important influences
in awakening mediæval Europe was the revival of learning and education
that came through the advent of the Moslems.
Illiteracy of early
Moslemism. Mohammed, the founder of Moslemism, had been almost
illiterate, and the Koran, or sacred book, was a curious
jumble of Judaistic, Christian, and other religious elements with which
Mohammed had become acquainted during his early travels. As long as this
religion was confined to the ignorant and unreflecting tribes of Arabia, it
served its purpose without modification. But when it spread into Syria and
came in contact with Greek philosophy, in order to appeal to the people
there, it had to be interpreted in Hellenistic terms, and during the eighth,
ninth, and tenth centuries, through the influence of the Nestorian scholars
(see p. 46), the Mohammedans were engaged in rendering into Arabic from
the Syriac, or from the original Greek, the works of the great philosophers,
mathematicians, and physicians. The Mohammedan cities of Syria soon
became renowned for their learning. In them arose such scholars as

Avicenna (980-1037), who wrote many treatises on
Learning of the
Mohammedan cities mathematics and philosophy, and a Canon of Medicine
of Syria. that remained authoritative for five centuries. Similarly,
there grew up a society called the ‘Brothers of Sincerity,’
which in its course of study amalgamated the Moslem theology with
Hellenistic philosophy.

Hellenized Moslemism in Spain.—But the masses of the Mohammedans
were as suspicious of the Greek learning as the orthodox Christians had
been, and toward the end of the eleventh century Hellenized Moslemism
was driven from the Orient and found a refuge in Northern Africa and in
Spain. Here the advanced Mohammedans became known as ‘Moors,’ and
their works were destined to have a pronounced influence upon the
Christians. There soon appeared such scholars as
Averroës and the
Moorish colleges. Averroës (1126-1198), who became the authoritative
commentator on Aristotle for several centuries; and
Moorish colleges were founded at Cordova, Granada, Toledo, and
elsewhere. In these institutions, while learning was still at a low ebb in the
Christian schools, were taught arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry,
astronomy, physics, biology, medicine, surgery, jurisprudence, logic, and
metaphysics. Arabic notation was also introduced in place of the
cumbersome Roman numerals and many inventions and discoveries were
made.

Effect upon Europe of the Moslem Education.—These schools and
colleges of the Moslems soon had their effect upon Christian education.
Through their influence, Raymund, Archbishop of
Learning stimulated
in Christian Toledo, by the middle of the twelfth century had the chief
education. Arabic treatises on philosophy translated into Castilian by
a learned Jew, and then into Latin by the monks; and
Frederick II had scholars render the works of Averroës into Latin. Such
translations had, however, passed through several media—Greek, Syriac,
Arabic, Castilian, Latin—and could not be at all accurate. But, stimulated
by this taste of Greek learning, the Christians sought a more immediate
version, and a half century later when the Venetians took the city of
Constantinople, the works of Aristotle were recovered in the original and
translated directly into Latin. Meanwhile the orthodox Mohammedanism

had been coming to the front in Spain and overwhelming the Hellenized
form, and it was left to Christian schools to continue the work of the
advanced Moorish institutions. Moslemism had returned to its primitive
stage, but it had helped bring back learning, especially the works of
Aristotle, to Christendom. As the classical learning had been restored from
the West during the revival of Charlemagne, it now returned from its refuge
in the East through the coming of the Moslems.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. V; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 331-334. For a further account of Saracen
education, see Coppée, H., History of the Conquest of Spain by the Arab-
Moors (Little, Brown, Boston, 1881), especially bk. X; Davidson, T., The
Brothers of Sincerity (International Journal of Ethics, July, 1898), and
Draper, J. W., History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (Harper,
1875), vol. I, chaps. XI and XIII, and vol. II, chaps. II and IV.

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES OF SCHOLASTICISM

OUTLINE

Scholasticism was a peculiar method of philosophic speculation in the
later mediæval period. At first, scholastic philosophers held that faith
must precede reason, but eventually reason itself tended to become the
means of testing the truth.

Scholastic education was organized in the monastic and episcopal
schools, and consisted in the limited learning of the times,
systematized on the basis of Aristotelian deduction. Scholasticism was
extreme in its discussions, but it tended to rationalize the Church
doctrines.

The Nature of Scholasticism.—One of the movements that most tended to
awaken the mediæval mind, especially during the latter part of the Middle
Ages, was the development of the Church philosophy known as
‘scholasticism.’ This movement does not indicate any one
Not a set of
doctrines, but a set of doctrines, but is rather a general designation for the
peculiar method. peculiar methods and tendencies of philosophic
speculation that became prominent within the Church in
the eleventh century, came to their height during the twelfth and thirteenth,
and declined rapidly the following century. The name is derived from
doctor scholasticus, which was the title given during the mediæval period
to the authorized teachers in a monastic or episcopal school, for it was
among these ‘schoolmen’ that the movement started and developed. Its
most striking characteristics are the narrowness of its field and the
thoroughness with which it was worked.

The History of Scholastic Development.—The history of scholasticism
belongs properly to the field of philosophy, but its influence in bringing on

the Renaissance and its effect upon education make a brief consideration of
its development necessary here. It began as an effort to vanquish heresy in
the interest of the Church dogmas, which until late in the Middle Ages it
had not generally been necessary to explain. Even then it was assumed that
the Church was in possession of all final truth, which had come to it by
Divine revelation, and was in harmony with reason, when fully understood.
It was, therefore, the aim of the earlier schoolmen to show how these
doctrines were consistent with each other and in
Anselm
accordance with reason. At first, as with Anselm (1033-
1109), it was held that faith must precede reason, and where reason was
incapable of penetrating the mysteries of revealed doctrine, it must desist
from its efforts. But the conviction gradually gained ground that human
reason is reliable and that truth can be reached only
and Abelard.
through investigation. Abelard (1079-1142) declared that
the only justification of a doctrine is its reasonableness, that reason must
precede faith, and that it is not sinful to doubt.

A new epoch for scholasticism dawned in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries through contact with the Greek philosophy of the Moors in Spain
and the subsequent recovery of some original treatises of Aristotle (see p.
67). For a time the Church endeavored to suppress the great philosopher,
but, failing to do so, soon utilized his works for its own defense, and even
made reason identical with Aristotle, whose authority was not to be
disputed. A group of most prominent schoolmen arose, and, as a result of
the discussions of Aquinas (1225-1274), Duns Scotus
Aquinas, Scotus,
and Occam. (1274-1308), and William of Occam (1280-1347), it
came to be held that truth is established by the fiat of
God, and that ecclesiastical dogmas are, consequently, not matters of
reason, but purely of faith. As a result of this breach between revelation and
reason, there arose two types of truth, and a tendency to choose that type
which was supported by reason.

Scholastic Education.—The schoolmen were thus throughout attempting
to rationalize the teachings of the Church, and to present them in scientific
form. As an education, scholasticism aimed also at
Aim,
furnishing a training in dialectic and intellectual
discipline that should make the student both keen and learned in the

knowledge of the times. The scholastic course of study, which was given at
first in the monastic and episcopal schools and later in the universities,
consisted in the beliefs of the Church and the limited
content,
learning of the times arranged in a systematized form
largely on the deductive basis of the Aristotelian logic. This knowledge
could all be grouped under the head of philosophical theology. The best
illustration of the formal and dogmatic way in which
and method.
these doctrines were usually presented can be found in
the Sententiæ of Peter the Lombard (1100-1160) and the Summa Theologiæ
of Aquinas (1225-1274), which were the standard texts of the day upon
theology. The work of Aquinas has four main parts, under each of which is
grouped a number of problems. Every problem is concerned with some
fundamental doctrine, and is further divided into several subtopics. After
the problem has been stated, first the arguments and authorities for the
various solutions other than the orthodox one are given and refuted in
regular order, then the proper solution with its arguments is set forth, and
finally, the different objections to it are answered in a similarly systematic
way. Peter the Lombard’s work has a like arrangement.

Its Value and Influence.—As a whole, the work of scholastic education
has been underestimated. It has been urged that it ruined
It systematized
Church doctrines, all spiritual realities by its extreme systemization of
and liberated religion, that it dealt with mere abstractions, and that it
philosophy from indulged in over-subtle distinctions and verbal quibbles.
theology.
But the scholastic arguments were not as purposeless or
absurd as they seem. For example, the celebrated inquiry of Aquinas as to
the number of angels that could stand on the point of a needle is simply an
attempt to present the nature of the Infinite in concrete form. It is the
characteristic of reasoning beings to analyze, compare, abstract, and
classify, and while scholasticism may have carried its abstractions, hair-
splittings, and scientific terminology to an extreme, it performed a great
service for knowledge. It found a confused mass of traditional and irrational
doctrines and practices, made them systematic, rational, and scientific, and
greatly assisted accuracy in thinking. The discussions of the schoolmen
resulted in liberating philosophy from theology, and, without intending it
perhaps, scholastic education aided the cause of human reason against
dogmatism and absolute authority. It greatly stimulated intellectual

interests, produced the most acute and subtle minds of the age, and helped
to prepare the way for the Renaissance.

Fig. 9.—The temple of wisdom.

An allegorical representation of the mediæval course of study
reproduced from the Margarita Philosophica of
Gregorius Reisch, Freiburg, 1504. Donatus (elementary
grammar) on the first floor; Priscian (advanced
grammar) on second; Aristotle (logic), Cicero (rhetoric),
and Boethius (arithmetic) on the third; Pythagoras
(music), Euclid (geometry), and Ptolemy (astronomy) on
the fourth; Pliny (natural history) and Seneca (ethics) on
the fifth; and Peter the Lombard (theology) on top.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. VI; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 292-313. For a good account of all The Great
Schoolmen of the Middle Ages (Hodder, London, 1881), see the work of
Townsend, W. J.; for the beginnings of scholasticism, Mullinger, J. B., The
University of Cambridge (Longmans, Green, 1888), vol. I, pp. 47-64; for
the life and influence of Abelard, Compayré, G., Abelard (Scribner, 1893),
chap. I; McCabe, J., Abelard (Putnam, 1901); and Rashdall, H., The
Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895),
vol. I, chap. II.

CHAPTER IX

THE MEDIÆVAL UNIVERSITIES

OUTLINE

Universities began to spring up toward the close of the Middle Ages.
Through local conditions, a course in medicine arose at Salerno; in
civil and canon law at Bologna; and in theology at Paris. Bologna
became the pattern for numerous universities in the South; and Paris
for many in the North.

Popes and sovereigns granted privileges by charter to the various
universities. The term ‘university’ originally signified a ‘corporation’
of students and teachers, and the students were usually grouped
according to ‘nations.’ The teaching body was divided into four or five
‘faculties.’

The course in arts included the seven liberal arts and portions of
Aristotle; in civil and canon law, the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian
and the Decree of Gratian respectively; in medicine, the treatises of
Greek and other medical writers; and in theology, mostly the Sententiæ
of Peter the Lombard. The texts were read and explained by the
lecturers, and a practical training in debate was furnished.

While the courses and methods were narrow and formal, the mediæval
university contained the germ of modern inquiry and did much to
foster independence of thought and action.

The Rise of Universities.—A most important effect upon subsequent
education came through the foundation of the mediæval universities. These
institutions grew out of the old cathedral and monastic schools, but found
their models largely in the liberal and professional courses of the Moorish
colleges. In general, they came into existence through the many broadening

influences of the later Middle Ages. Their rise was
In general a product
intimately connected with the stimulus of the Moslem
of all that was best
presentation of Greek philosophy and science, with the
in the Middle Ages.
interest in dialectic and theological discussions, which
led to the development of scholasticism, with the reaction from
‘otherworldliness’ resulting from the ideals of chivalry, and with the growth
of cities and wealth, and the consequent emphasis upon secular interests
and knowledge (see chap. xi). However, while they were all more or less
the product of the same factors, no two sprang from exactly the same set of
causes, and special conditions played a part in the evolution of each
university.

The Foundation of Universities at Salerno, Bologna, and Paris.—The
oldest of these institutions, that at Salerno, near Naples, was simply a
school of medicine, and originated through the survival
Causes of the
medical school at of the old Greek medical works in Southwestern Italy,
Salerno. and through the attraction of the mineral springs and
salubrity of this particular place. By the middle of the
eleventh century Salerno was well known as the leading place for medical
study. It was, however, never chartered as a regular university, although in
1231 Frederick II recognized it as the school of medicine for the university
he had created at Naples some seven years earlier.

On the other hand, Northern Italy became known as a center for the study of
Roman law. The cities here, in order to defend their
Origin of the
courses at Bologna independence, were led to study this subject, and
endeavored to find some special charter, grant, or edict
from the old Roman emperors upon which to base their claims. Several
northern centers were renowned for their investigation of
in civil law
the Roman civil law, but early in the twelfth century
Bologna became preëminent through the lectures of Irnerius. By him the
entire Corpus Juris Civilis, a compilation of Roman law made by eminent
jurists in the sixth century at the command of the emperor Justinian, was
collected and critically discussed. Influenced by this example, a monk of
Bologna, named Gratian, undertook to codify all edicts and formulations of
popes and councils in a convenient text-book. The Decree of Gratian, which
resulted, was almost immediately recognized as the authority upon the

subject, and canon law came to be studied here with the
and canon law.
same thoroughness as civil law. The university at
Bologna was regularly chartered by Frederick Barbarossa in 1158, probably
as a recognition of the services of its masters in support of his imperial
claims, and faculties of arts, medicine, and theology were established at
various times. It was thus the first real university, and its reputation soon
became widespread.

Next in order of foundation came the university at Paris, which was by far
the most famous of all. The special interest here, as in
Development of
liberal arts and this part of Europe generally, was dialectic and
theology at Paris. scholasticism. The university grew out of the cathedral
school at Notre Dame, which had acquired considerable
reputation under the headship of William of Champeaux, Abelard, and Peter
the Lombard, but it was not until 1200, after canon law and medicine had
been added to the liberal arts and theology, that it received complete
recognition by the charter of Philip Augustus.

Bologna and Paris as the Models for Other Universities.—Salerno, as
we have seen, was not a real university, and it did not reproduce its type;
but Bologna, and even more Paris, became the mother of universities, for
many other institutions were organized after their general plans. At Bologna
the students, who were usually mature men, had entire charge of the
government of the university. They selected the masters and determined the
fees, length of term, and time of beginning. But in Paris, where the students
were younger, the government was in the hands of the masters.
Consequently, new foundations in the North, where Paris was the type,
usually became ‘master-universities,’ while those of the
‘Master-
universities’ in the South were ‘student-universities.’ During the thirteenth
North, but ‘student- and fourteenth centuries it became fashionable for the
universities’ in the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, to charter existing
South.
organizations or to found new institutions on one of these
two plans, and by the time the Renaissance was well started about eighty
universities had been established in Europe. Not all of these foundations
were permanent, however, for some thirty have, in the course of time,
become extinct, and those which remain are much changed in character.

Privileges Granted to the Universities.—From the time of the earliest
official recognition of the universities, a large variety of exemptions,
immunities, and other special privileges were conferred upon the
organizations or upon their masters and students, by the charters of popes,
emperors, kings, and municipalities. The students of the universities were in
many instances taken under the immediate protection of
Protection and
autonomy. the sovereign, and were allowed to be tried in special
courts of their own, independent of civil jurisdiction, and
to possess complete autonomy in all their internal affairs. Generally
masters, students, and their retainers alike were relieved from all taxation
and from military service. Likewise, universities were
immunity from
taxation and granted the right to license masters to lecture anywhere
military service, without further examination (jus ubique docendi), and the
and right to license privilege of ‘striking’ (cessatio), when university rights
masters and to
‘strike’. were infringed. If no redress were given in the latter case,
the suspension of lectures was followed by emigration of
the university to another town. This could easily be done, since none of the
mediæval universities had buildings of their own, and there was no need of
expensive libraries, laboratories, and other equipment.

Through such special rights the universities obtained great power and
became very independent. Soon the liberty allowed to students degenerated
into recklessness and license, and they became dissipated and quarrelsome.
This is especially seen in the life of the so-called
Wandering students.
‘wandering students,’ who migrated from university to
university, begging their way, and were shiftless, rollicking, and vicious.
The one compensating feature of such degeneracy was their production of
jovial Latin and German songs to voice their appreciation of forbidden
pleasures and their protest against restraint.

Organization of the Universities.—The term universitas, or ‘university,’
did not imply originally, as often claimed since, an institution where
‘everything’ is taught, but it was used of any legal
The ‘university’ a
corporation. corporation, and only in the course of time was it limited
to an organization of masters and students. The phrase
studium generale was also often used of a university, to indicate a school
where the students from all parts of civilization were received, and to

contrast it with a studium particulare, which was confined to pupils of a
limited neighborhood. The formation of a university had
The nations,
been preceded by the organization of ‘nations,’ or bodies
of students grouped according to the part of Europe from which they came,
but these nations soon began to combine for the sake of obtaining greater
privileges and power. Every year each nation chose a
councilors,
‘councilor,’ who was to represent it and guard its
interests. On the side of the masters, the university became organized into
‘faculties,’ of which there might be at least four,—arts, law, medicine, and
theology; and each faculty came to elect a ‘dean’ as its
faculties, deans, and
rector. representative. The deans and the councilors jointly
elected the ‘rector,’ or head of the university.

Course in the Four Faculties.—The course of study to be offered by each
faculty was largely fixed by papal decree or university legislation during the
thirteenth century. The course in arts, which occupied six
Arts.
years, included the texts on the liberal arts mentioned for
the monastic schools (see pp. 56 f.) and several of the treatises of Aristotle,
as rapidly as they were recovered. In the law course, Corpus Juris Civilis
was the authorized text for civil law, and the Decree of
Law.
Gratian for canon law. The faculty of medicine utilized
the Greek treatises by Hippocrates (c. 460-375 B. C.) and
Medicine.
Galen (c. 130-200 A. D.), the Canon of Avicenna (see p.
66), and the works of certain Jewish and Salernitan physicians. The students
of theology put most of their time upon the four books of
Theology.
Peter the Lombard’s Sententiæ (Fig. 9), although the
Bible was studied incidentally.

The Methods of Instruction.—The training of a mediæval student
consisted not only in acquiring the subjects mentioned, but in learning to
debate upon them. The acquisition of the subject-matter was accomplished
through lectures, which consisted in reading and
Lectures.
explaining the text-book under consideration (Fig. 10).
Beside the text itself, the teacher would read all the explanatory notes,
summaries, cross-references, and objections to the author’s statements,
which often quite overshadowed the original, and might even add a
commentary of his own. The passage was read slowly and repeated

whenever necessary. The whole exercise was carried on in Latin, which had
to be learned by the student before coming to the
Debates.
university. The training in debate was furnished by means
of formal disputations, in which one student, or group of students, was
pitted against another (Fig. 11). In these contests, which also were
conducted in Latin, not only were authorities cited, but the debaters might
add arguments of their own. Thus, compared with the memorizing of
lectures, debating afforded some acuteness and vigor of intellect, but by the
close of the fifteenth century it had become no longer reputable. The aim
came to be to win and to secure applause without regard to truth or
consistency.

Examinations and Degrees.—At the close of the course, the student was
examined in his ability to define and dispute; and if he passed, he was
admitted to the grade of master, doctor, or professor.
Master or doctor.
These degrees seem originally to have been about on a
par with each other, and signified that the candidate was now ready to
practice the craft of teaching. The baccalaureate was at
Baccalaureate.
first not a real degree, but simply permission to become a
candidate for the license to teach. During the thirteenth century, however, it
came to be sought as an honor by many not intending to teach, and
eventually became a separate degree.

The Mediæval Universities:
Fig. 10.—The lecture.
Fig. 11.—The disputation.

The Value and Influence of the University Training.—Obviously the
mediæval universities had most of the defects of their times. From a modern
point of view, the content of their course of study was
Meager and
authoritative, meager, fixed, and formal, and the methods of teaching
were stereotyped and authoritative. They largely
neglected the real literature of the classical age, and permitted but little that
savored of investigation or thinking. Yet the universities were a product of
the growing tendencies that later burst the fetters of mediævalism. They
were a great encouragement to subtlety, industry, and thoroughness, and

their efforts toward philosophic speculation contained the
but somewhat
productive of germs of the modern spirit of inquiry and rationality.
inquiry and They were even of immediate assistance in promoting
freedom. freedom of discussion and advancing democracy, and to
their arbitration were often referred disputes between the
civil and ecclesiastical powers. Thus they aided greatly in advancing the
cause of individualism and carrying forward the torch of civilization and
progress.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. IX; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 313-327. Standard works on the universities in
general are Laurie, S. S., The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities
(Appleton, 1886), and the more complete and accurate Universities of
Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895), by Rashdall,
H. For a brief source account of the privileges, courses, methods, and
student life of universities, see Norton, A. O., Readings in the History of
Education; Mediæval Universities (Harvard University, 1909), or Munro,
D. C., The Mediæval Student (Longmans, Green, 1899). For the history of
individual universities, see Compayré, G., Abelard and the Origin and
Early History of Universities (Scribner, 1893); Lyte, H. C. M., A History of
the University of Oxford (Macmillan, 1886); Mullinger, J. B., University of
Cambridge (Longmans, London, 1888); and Paulsen, F., The German
Universities (Macmillan, 1895; Scribner, 1906).

CHAPTER X

THE EDUCATION OF CHIVALRY

OUTLINE

Owing to the weakness of the regular sovereignty after Charlemagne’s
day, the feudal system sprang up, and by the middle of the twelfth
century it had developed a code of manners known as chivalry.

Out of this there arose a training for knighthood in religion, honor, and
gallantry. Before becoming a knight, the boy was early trained at
home, then at some castle, first as ‘page,’ and later as ‘squire.’

This chivalric education produced many contradictory results, but it
tended to refine the times and to counteract ‘otherworldliness.’

The Development of Feudalism.—The mediæval education thus far
described has had to do mostly with the schooling of the ecclesiastical and
other select professional classes. Quite a different type of training was that
given the knight. This has generally been known as the education of
chivalry. Chivalry is a name for the code of manners in usage during the
days of the feudal system. By this system is meant an order of society and
government that gradually grew up in the Middle Ages alongside the
regular political organization, and when, under the successors of
Charlemagne, the monarchy became weak, tended to be
Dependence upon a
powerful neighbor substituted for it. Under feudalism small landowners and
became a regular freemen lacking land had come to depend upon some
form of powerful neighbor for protection, and even to seek from
government.
him a dependent tenure of land. Then, in time, the lords
acquired a species of sovereignty over their tenants, and by the tenth
century there had come to be a great social gulf between the nobility, who
owned the land and lived in castles, and the peasantry, who tilled the soil
and supported them. The only serious business of the former was fighting

with spear, sword, or battle-axe, in their own quarrels or those of their
feudal superiors. To prepare for this warfare, mock combats may
occasionally have been engaged in as early as the tenth century (Fig. 12).

The Ideals of Chivalry.—But by the middle of the twelfth century, when
the old heroic age had lapsed into an age of courtesy, with extravagant
devotion to women and romantic adventure as its chief ideals, these
encounters were organized into a definite species of pastime called
‘tournaments,’ and soon degenerated into mere pageantry. Hence the rules
of chivalry became fixed and formal, and the art of horsemanship and the
management of the lance and spear were developed and settled. The ideals
of knightly conduct and education could then be stated as
Religion, honor,
and gallantry. ‘service and obedience’ to God, as represented by the
organized church, to one’s lord, or feudal superior, and to
one’s lady, whose favor the knight wore in battle or tournament. The three
ruling motives of chivalric education were, therefore, held to be ‘religion,
honor, and gallantry.’

The Three Preparatory Stages of Education.—There were three periods
in the preparatory training of a knight. First, until the
Training (1) at
home, child was seven or eight, he was trained in religion,
politeness, and physique at home by his mother. After this
he became a ‘valet’ or ‘page’ at the home of a nobleman,
(2) as a page,
who was generally his father’s feudal superior. Here he
performed personal duties for his lord and lady, and his education was
conducted mostly by the latter. He learned the game of chess, acquired the
etiquette of love and honor, and was taught to play the harp and pipe and to
sing, to read and write, and to compose in verse. Outside the castle, the
pages were trained in running, wrestling, boxing, riding,
and
and rudimentary tilting (Fig. 14). In the third stage, at
fourteen or fifteen the youth passed to the grade of
(3) as a squire.
‘squire,’ and, while he still attended the lady and carved
the meat or handed around the viands for the guests, his chief service was to
the knight and his training came through him. He slept near him at night,
groomed his horses, kept his armor and weapons in condition, and attended
him at the tournament or upon the battlefield. Through this service the
squire himself was practiced in all the warlike arts. Toward the close of the

period the embryo knight also chose his lady-love, and learned to write
verses and dance. When the squire became twenty-one,
The knighting.
he was knighted with many religious ceremonies. After a
season of fasting, the candidate entered the church in full armor and spent a
night in vigil and holy meditation. In the morning he confessed, had his
sword blessed upon the altar by the priest, and took an oath to defend the
church, protect women, and succor the poor. He then knelt before his lord,
who laid his own sword upon the candidate and dubbed him knight.

The Effects of Chivalric Education.—Such was the training of the knight
in the ‘rudiments of love, war, and religion.’ It contained many apparent
anomalies and contradictions, and every virtue seems to have been balanced
by a correlative vice. The knights were recklessly
Courage, but
cruelty; courageous in battle, but their anger was ungovernable
and their cruelty extreme. A great self-respect was
supposed to characterize the true knight, but this often
self-respect, but
pride; reacted into an overweening pride. Likewise, while the
knights were rated largely according to their liberality
and hospitality, these virtues degenerated into a great love
liberality, but
extravagance; and of display and extravagance beyond measure. Again,
other anomalies. although great respect for womanhood was inculcated,
not much consideration could be expected by the woman
beneath a certain rank. Similarly, the knightly word of honor, if
accompanied by certain forms, would be held sacred, but should these
forms be omitted, a decided breach of faith was not uncommon. As a whole,
however, the chivalric training had a beneficial effect upon the society of
the times. It helped to organize the turmoil and to refine the barbarism of
mediæval Europe, and was an effective instrument in raising the position of
women. Moreover, while this peculiar training was
Counteraction of
otherworldliness. artificial and worldly, by that very tendency it did much
to counteract the ‘otherworldly’ ideal of monasticism and
the general asceticism of the period. It encouraged an activity in earthly
affairs and a frank enjoyment of this life, and thus helped to develop a
striking characteristic of the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. VII; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 284-291. Detailed descriptions of the stages of
chivalric training can be found in Cornish, F. W., Chivalry (Sonnenschein,
London, 1901) (Macmillan, 1908); Furnival, F. J., Early Education in
England (Forewords to The Babees Book, Early English Text Society,
Original Series, vol. 32); and Mills, C., The History of Chivalry (Lea and
Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1844), vol. I, chaps. I-V, and vol. II, chap. VII. An
ingenious, but uncritical reconstruction of the life of a knight in story form,
is found in Gautier, L., Chivalry, chaps. V-XX.

The Education of Chivalry:

Figs. 12 and 13.—Preliminaries and termination of a combat.

Fig. 14.—Boys playing tournament with a ‘quintain,’ or
dummy opponent.
(Reproduced from Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of England.)

CHAPTER XI

THE BURGHER, GILD, AND CHANTRY SCHOOLS

OUTLINE

In the later Middle Ages the commerce of Europe was greatly
increased. Soon the towns received a large impulse from serfs that
flocked into them, and before long an influential ‘burgher class’ arose.

There also sprang up merchant and craft gilds, which afforded an
industrial training through apprenticeship, and a more formal
education through ‘gild schools.’ As the gilds merged with the town,
these institutions became ‘burgher schools,’ and afforded a practical
education in reading, writing, and reckoning. Various ‘adventure,’
‘chantry,’ and other schools were also absorbed by the burgher schools.

Thus these institutions came to represent the educational interests of
the industrial classes, and paved the way for the civic control of
education.

The Rise of Commerce and Industry.—A most important influence in
producing a transition from the mediæval to modern times is found in the
increase of commerce during the later Middle Ages. From the Roman days
down, trade had never died out in Western Europe, especially Italy, despite
the injuries wrought by barbarian invasions, as the nobles had always need
of luxuries, and the Church of articles of utility in its
Impulse caused by
Crusades and desire services. But the demand for vessels and transports
for luxuries. during the Crusades, and the desire for the precious
stones, silks, perfumes, drugs, spices, and porcelain from
the Orient afterward, gave a tremendous impulse to commercial and
industrial activity. The people of Europe began to think of what articles
others outside their own little groups might want in exchange for these
luxuries, and to strive to produce such commodities. They also undertook

themselves to make some of the new articles, such as light and gauzy cotton
and linen fabrics, silks, velvets, and tapestries. Thus the means of
communication between the European states was greatly facilitated, new
commercial routes and new regions were opened, geographical knowledge
was increased, navigation was developed, maritime and mercantile affairs
were organized, manufactures and industries were enlarged, currency was
increased, and forms of credit were improved. All this tended toward a
larger intellectual view and a partial dissipation of provincialism and
intolerance.

Development of Cities and the Burgher Class.—The most noteworthy
consequence of this industrial and commercial awakening
Contributed to the
growth of cities, was the growth of towns and cities. There was little town
life in Western Europe during the Middle Ages before the
twelfth century, as the old Roman towns had, through the invasions of the
Germans, largely disintegrated, and but few new organizations had sprung
up in their place. While some towns still existed in Italy and Southern
France, most of the people of Europe lived in the country upon feudal
estates. These little communities were largely isolated and independent of
the rest of the world. They produced among themselves all that their
members needed, and little or no money was necessary for their crude
forms of exchange. Their life was unbroken in its monotony, there was little
opportunity for them to better their condition, and their industries were
carried on in a perfunctory and wasteful fashion. But with the growth of
commerce and population, these serfs began to find it more profitable to
work in the towns and compensate the lord of the manor with money rather
than work, and the lords, in turn, found it of advantage to accept money in
lieu of services, especially as many of them had been impoverished by the
Crusades. Great bodies of serfs flocked to the towns, and new centers
sprang up around the manorial estates and monasteries as manufactures,
trades, and commerce increased.

Feudalism thus began to be threatened as early as the twelfth century, and
within a hundred years the extinction of serfdom was assured. The people
soon rebelled against the rule of their lords and either expelled them
altogether or secured from them for a monetary consideration a charter
conferring more liberal rights and privileges. By these charters, the lord

agreed to recognize the gild of merchants, and to permit the people to
govern themselves. As industries, trade, and commerce
and to the
development of a continued to develop, the craftsmen and merchants grew
burgher class. rapidly in wealth and importance. They were soon
enabled to rival the clergy in education, and the nobility
in the luxury of their dwellings and living. They began to read, and books
were written or adapted for their needs. The ‘burgher class’ came to have a
recognized position by the side of the clergy and nobility; and the king, in
order to retain their support, was forced to take counsel with them. This
development of industry and commerce, growth of town and city life, and
rise of a ‘third estate’ is one of the most noteworthy changes of the late
Middle Ages.

The Gilds and Industrial Education.—Such a new social attitude
naturally gave rise to new forms of education. An informal type of training
soon sprang up in connection with the development of ‘gilds.’ Besides the
original gild of merchants, through which the town had presented a united
front and gained its privileges, separate gilds for the various crafts had been
established in each town. These craft gilds were the sole repositories of the
traditional lore of the vocations, and became the chief channel for
transmitting it. While their number and variety differed in each town, all the
gilds sought to prevent anyone who had not been regularly approved and
admitted to the corporation from practicing the trade he represented. In
consequence of this attempt at regulation, industrial training in the craft of
each gild grew up through an apprenticeship system. This was provided
upon a domestic basis. The ‘apprentice’ entered the household of his
‘master,’ and learned the craft under his direction (Fig. 15). The time
necessary for this varied greatly in different crafts. For example, in Paris it
took two years to learn to become a cook, eight years an
Stages of
embroiderer, and ten years a goldsmith. While the
apprentice received no wages during this period, he was
(1) apprentice
under the protection of the gild, and might appeal to the
organization against ill-treatment or defective training. At
(2) journeyman, and
(3) master. the end of his apprenticeship, he became a ‘journeyman’
and could earn wages, but only by working for a master,
and not through direct service for the public. After an examination by the
gild, which might include the presentation of a ‘masterpiece,’ or sample of

his work, the journeyman eventually became a master. In other ways, the
organization regulated and protected its craft. In order that journeymen and
masters might not become too numerous, all masters, save those on the
governing board of the gild, were forbidden to take more than one
apprentice. The methods of practicing each trade and the hours to be
devoted to it each day were specified, and the handiwork of each man
carefully scrutinized. In many instances, the gild put its own stamp upon
good work, and might often seize products that it considered defective.

Gild Schools.—In this way there grew up a species of industrial education,
with three definite stages in its organization and with inspection at every
point. Before long, too, the gilds developed a more
A more formal
means of education formal means of education. The existing ecclesiastical
was instituted schools did not altogether meet the needs of the gilds, and
through priests of they undertook the establishment of additional
the gilds and
endowments. institutions for this purpose. Where the gilds had retained
one or more priests to perform the necessary religious
offices for their members, before long they also utilized these functionaries
to keep a school for the benefit of their own and sometimes other children
in the town. Later, endowments were furnished especially for a priest to
teach school, or an amount sufficient for the purpose was paid out of the
common funds of the gild. Some of these gild schools, like ‘Merchant
Taylors’’ of London, or the Grammar School at Stratford-on-Avon, where
Shakespeare was educated (Fig. 16), still survive as secondary institutions.
Many instances, too, are recorded where the members of a certain gild were
appointed trustees of a school established by an individual, and were
granted the right of appointing and dismissing the master, admitting the
pupils, managing the property, and formulating statutes. In some such
fashion Colet later vested the management of the famous St. Paul’s school
(see p. 118) in the gild of mercers.

Fig. 15.—Apprenticeship training in a gild. (The master
bootmaker and his wife, two journeymen, and an
apprentice.)

Fig. 16.—Gild school and church at Stratford-on-Avon. (In
this ‘grammar’ school Shakespeare learned ‘little Latin
and less Greek.’)

Burgher Schools.—As the gild organizations gradually merged with those
of the towns, the gild schools were generally absorbed in
Gild schools
absorbed by the the institutions known as ‘burgher’ or town schools. At
burgher schools. first these burgher schools were not very dissimilar to
those established by the Church, except that they were
more conveniently located, but later various types of vernacular schools
arose to meet special practical demands, especially writing and reckoning.
The Latin burgher schools were also somewhat practical in their course, and
often admitted some pupils who desired to learn only to read, write, and
reckon. Writing had become an important vocation, since printing had not
yet been invented; and there was a definite demand for
Practical course.
writers in public offices, private secretaries, letter writers
for the illiterate, and teachers of writing. Reckoning grew directly out of the
new commercial life, and was often taught in the writing schools. It was not
taught from the standpoint of theory or discipline, as was the arithmetic in

the Latin schools, but for the sake of practical calculation and bookkeeping.
But even all the facilities of the regular Latin and vernacular schools of the
town were not sufficient to meet the demand for a more practical education.
In consequence, private ‘adventure’ schools, taught by wandering teachers
or by women, likewise often sprang up, and some teachers were even
licensed by the town authorities to teach the vernacular. In most instances,
however, these institutions were also combined with the burgher schools.

Chantry Schools.—Another type of institution that came into prominence
toward the close of the Middle Ages was the ‘chantry school.’ Schools of
this sort at first arose out of bequests by wealthy persons to support priests
who should ‘chant’ masses for the repose of their souls.
Arose from
foundations for Since these religious duties did not absorb all the time of
masses for the dead. the priests, they were able to do some teaching. And
before long, the founders of chantries themselves came to
direct that the priests carrying out their will should be required to teach.
Often two chantry priests were provided, one to teach a ‘grammar’ school,
and the other a ‘song’ or vernacular school. From the first most of these
chantry schools were free of all tuition charges, the priest being requested to
“teach gratis, without asking anything beyond his stipend for his pains,” but
occasionally they were gratuitous only to the children of his parishioners or
to poor children whose parents or guardians asked for the privilege.

Influence of the New Schools.—The chantry schools likewise were often
united with various other schools within a town, and became jointly known
as ‘burgher schools.’ Many new foundations of a similar nature were also
made. These burgher schools were largely controlled and supported by the
public authorities, although still generally taught by the priests. They came
to represent the interests of the mercantile and industrial
Paved the way for a
more secularized classes, and gave instruction in subjects of more practical
education. value than had any of the schools hitherto. Such
institutions sprang up everywhere during the later Middle
Ages. They were often strongly opposed by the ecclesiastical authorities,
who struggled hard to abolish them or bring them under control, but they
continued to grow and hold their own. The number of lay teachers in them
gradually increased, and thus paved the way for the tendency toward the
secularization and civic control of education that appeared later on. The

new schools, therefore, that arose in connection with the development of
commerce and industry and the growth of towns, were one of the largest
factors that led into the broadening of outlook known as the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. X; Monroe, Text-
book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 337-339. Adams, G. B., Civilization during the
Middle Ages (Scribner, 1894), furnishes an illuminating chapter (XII) upon
the Growth of Commerce and Its Results. The development of towns and
gilds in various countries of Europe is described in detail by Ashley, W. J.,
English Economic History and Theory (Putnam, 1892), vol. I, chap. II;
Green, Alice S., Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (Macmillan, 1894);
Gross, C., The Gild Merchant (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890); Staley, E.,
The Guilds of Florence (Methuen, London, 1906); and Unwin, G., The
Gilds and Companies of London (Methuen, London, 1908; Scribner, 1909).
Accounts of the new types of schools are found in Leach, A. F., English
Schools at the Reformation (Constable, 1896), chaps. 7-9; Nohle, E.,
History of the German School System (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of
Education, 1897-1898, vol. I), pp. 22-26; and Watson, F., English Grammar
Schools to 1660 (Cambridge University Press, 1909), chap. VII.

PART III
THE TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES

CHAPTER XII

THE HUMANISTIC EDUCATION

OUTLINE

By the fourteenth century there appeared an intellectual awakening,
known as the Renaissance. It was accompanied by a ‘revival of
learning’ and an education called ‘humanistic.’

Italy first showed evidence of the new movement. The characteristics
of the Renaissance were embodied in Petrarch and Boccaccio, but little
was done with the Greek classics until Chrysoloras came from
Constantinople.

The tyrants of various cities often had humanistic schools started at
their courts. Of these the most typical was that under Vittorino da
Feltre. These schools eventually forced the universities to admit the
humanities to their course. But humanism gradually degenerated into
‘Ciceronianism.’

Humanistic education also gradually spread to the countries north of
Italy, but it there took on more of a moral color. In France, the
protection of Francis I encouraged the introduction of humanism into
educational institutions by various scholars. The German universities
likewise began to respond to humanistic influences.

The Hieronymians first introduced the classics into the schools, and
Erasmus, who was trained by them, became the leader in humanistic
education. Through other humanistic schools started by Sturm and
others, the ‘gymnasium,’ the typical classical school of Germany, was
evolved, and the humanistic education became fixed and formal.

In England the movement gradually developed at Oxford and
Cambridge, and Colet started St. Paul’s school, which became the

model for all secondary schools. Humanism in England, however, soon
retrograded into a formalism, and the ‘grammar’ and ‘public’ schools
there are little changed to-day.

The first secondary schools in the American colonies were modeled
after the grammar schools of the mother country.

The Passing of the Middle Ages.—It can now be seen that a new spirit had
crept into European civilization, and that the Middle Ages were passing. We
have previously noted (pp. 53f.) that, in order to bring the German
barbarians up to the level of the past, it was necessary for the Church to set
an authoritative standard and repress all variation on the part of the
individual. Yet such bondage of the human spirit was unnatural, and there
were periodic tendencies to rebel against the system. In
Mediævalism
contained the germ fact, mediævalism contained within itself the germ of its
of its own own emancipation. During the eighth century there came
emancipation. about a new political order, which culminated in
Charlemagne’s revival of education. While conditions
were never again as desperate after this stimulus, with the disruption of
Charlemagne’s empire another decline set in. But by the thirteenth century a
new revival, material and intellectual, had also appeared. Several
developments gave evidence of the expansion within, and assisted in
producing it. The broadening of horizon through contact with the Moors,
the development of scholasticism, the evolution of universities, the worldly
appeal of chivalry, and the growth of cities, gilds, and commerce were all
helping by accumulation to dispel the mediæval spirit.

And by the fourteenth century a new dawn had been ushered in. The period
that followed was marked by a general intellectual and cultural progress
that began to free men from their bondage to ecclesiasticism and to induce
them to look at the world about them. The adherence to
The general
tendencies of the an ‘otherworldly’ ideal, the restriction of learning, the
Awakening reception of the teachings of the Church without
investigation, and the conformity of the individual were
by this time rapidly disappearing. Such tendencies were clearly being
replaced by a genuine joy in the life of this world, a broader field of
knowledge and thought, a desire to reason and deal with all ideas more

critically, and enlarged ideals of individualism. The days of mere absorption
and assimilation had passed.

The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning.—This tremendous
widening of horizon has been generally known as the
While the
Renaissance was Renaissance or ‘new birth.’ The term is used to indicate
caused by internal that the spirit of the Græco-Roman development had
factors, it was returned, and that opportunity for expression was granted
promoted by the
Revival of to the individual once more. But this period is also
Learning. appropriately known as the ‘Revival of Learning.’ For,
while the awakening preceded and was caused by internal
factors, rather than by the recovery of classical literature and learning,
intellectual freedom was very greatly heightened and forwarded after a
restoration of the classics once began. The only food at hand that could
satisfy the awakened intelligence of the times was the literature and culture
of the classical peoples. The discovery that the writings of the ancient world
were filled with a genuine vitality and virility, and that the old authors had
dealt with world problems in a profound and masterly fashion, and with far
more vision than had ever been possible for the mediævalists, gave rise to
an eager desire and enthusiasm for the classics that went beyond all bounds.
A knowledge of classical literature had never altogether disappeared, and
various works had been preserved by the monks and others. To search out
the manuscripts of the Latin and Greek writers, the monasteries, cathedrals,
and castles were now ransacked from end to end. The manuscripts found
were rapidly multiplied, and the greatest pains taken to secure the correct
form of every passage. The devotees of the new movement were generally
called ‘humanists,’ and the training embodying the
Humanists and
humanistic classics has since been termed ‘humanistic education.’
education.
Causes of the Awakening in Italy.—While the general
tendency toward an awakening was apparent throughout Western Europe, it
first became evident in Italy. This was due to the fact that Italy was at the
time a seat of intellectual activity resulting from several factors. It was a
storm center for civic and interstate quarrels, and, as a
Political storm
center. result of this political unrest, the citizens were kept
constantly on the outlook for their own safety and
interests, and their wits were greatly sharpened. Even the exile, into which

one civic faction or another was constantly forced, had the effect of
broadening their vision and bringing out the greatest possibilities within
them. Again, the commercial intercourse of the Italian
Commercial
activity. cities with other countries had, for various physiographic
and historic reasons, become extraordinarily active. This
tended to open the minds of the Italians, break up their old conceptions, free
them of prejudice, and increase their thirst for learning. Furthermore, the
ghost of the classic ages still haunted its old home. A
Home of the
classics. knowledge of the Latin tongue had never ceased to exist
in Italy, and many manuscripts of the Latin and Greek
authors had been preserved. There was only needed an intellectual
awakening sufficient to shake off the thraldom to the Church and produce
an appreciation of classical literature and culture, in order to bring back this
spirit of the past into real pulsating life.

The Revival of the Latin Classics.—The earliest of the
Petrarch embodied
the Renaissance great humanists was Petrarch (1304-1374). In him we
spirit, find the very embodiment of the Renaissance spirit. He
completely repudiated the ‘otherworldly’ ideal of
mediævalism, and was keenly aware of the beauties and joys of this life. He
did not hesitate to attack the most hoary of traditions, nor to rely upon
observation, investigation, and reason. He likewise felt a kinship with the
thinkers and writers of the classic age, when independence and breadth
were given more scope, and held that their works must be recovered before
their spirit could be continued. This led to a tremendous
and was an
enthusiast on the enthusiasm for the Latin classics, and he spent much of
Latin classics. his life in restoring ancient culture. He devoted himself
during his extensive travels largely to collecting
manuscripts of the old Latin writers, which previously had been widely
scattered, and endeavoring to repair in them the ravages of time. And he
inspired every one he met with a desire to gather and study the works of the
classic authors. He also wrote a number of Latin works that were filled with
the classic spirit. Among them were several collections of Letters, a work of
erudition On Famous Men, and an epic poem in honor of Scipio Africanus
that he called Africa. Some of his letters were indited to Cicero, Homer, and
other classical authors as if they were still living. After he
His influence.
had been crowned as poet laureate by the University of

Rome in 1341, he spent most of his time visiting various Italian cities and
spreading the humanistic spirit. Of the younger scholars and literary men
influenced by him probably the most noted was Boccaccio (1313-1375).
Through Petrarch this youthful poet developed a perfect passion for the
ancient writers, and devoted the rest of his life to classical culture. He
obtained a wide knowledge of the Latin writers, and searched out,
preserved, and had copied as many manuscripts as possible.

The Development of Greek Scholarship.—With all this revival of Latin
literature by the côterie of Petrarch, for some time there was little done with
the Greek. That language had almost disappeared in Europe, and the
greatest Greek authors were known only through Latin
Little was at first
known of the Greek translations. But a knowledge of the Greek language and
classics. literature still persisted in the Eastern empire, and the
humanists of Italy were, through the works of the Latin
authors, constantly directed back to the writings of the Greeks. They
became eager to read them in the original, and several humanists began the
study of Greek. Nevertheless, Petrarch pathetically confessed: “Homer is
dumb to me, while I am most certainly deaf to him.” And while, with the
aid of his Greek teacher, Boccaccio made a translation of Homer, it showed
little real appreciation of the original. Not until
Chrysoloras
Chrysoloras (1350-1415) came as an envoy from the
Eastern emperor and was induced in 1396 to settle in Italy and teach Greek,
was any systematic training possible. During the next sixteen years this man
of learning taught in the leading centers, established schools, made
translations of Greek authors, and wrote a Greek
and his pupils.
grammar. From his efforts sprang a number of famous
scholars, such as Vergerio, Niccolo de’ Niccoli, Bruni, and Guarino da
Verona and his son. These men collected or copied hundreds of volumes,
started libraries and schools, made excellent translations, wrote treatises on
humanistic education, and trained a number of humanists, who became
distinguished later.

The Court Schools and Vittorino da Feltre.—A powerful support for the
work of these humanists resulted from the rivalry of the Italian cities. The
princes at the head of these centers were often usurpers, and depended
largely upon city pride to maintain their power. To appeal to the classical

enthusiasm of their people, they did everything possible
City tyrants
fostered humanism to propagate the humanistic movement and make their
and started court cities illustrious. Probably the most typical examples of
schools. these humanistic tyrants are found among the Visconti at
Milan and the Medici at Florence. In some instances
these court circles promoted the new learning informally, but often, where a
scholar had been taken into the family of a prince as private tutor, children
of the neighboring aristocracy were associated and a regular school was
started. ‘Court schools’ of this sort soon existed at Florence, Venice, Padua,
Pavia, Verona, Ferrara, and several other cities, but the best known of all
was that organized by Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) at Mantua.

The Court School at Mantua.—Vittorino undertook this school at forty-
five, when he had received the best possible education of the times in Latin,
Greek, and mathematics, and had greatly distinguished himself as a teacher
and a man of piety. He received into the school not only
Types of pupils.
the royal princes and the scions of the leading Mantuan
families, but, by special permission, the sons of his personal friends and
promising boys of every degree. He dwelt with his pupils, and was most
strict in his selection of masters and of attendants, that the morals of his
pupils might be of the highest. Likewise, ‘the father of his pupils,’ as
Vittorino held himself to be, looked out for their food, clothing, and health,
and shared in their games, interests, and pleasures. It was his intention to
secure for his pupils that harmonious development of
The aim was
harmonious mind, body, and morals that the old Greeks had known as
development of a ‘liberal education,’ but he emphasized the practical and
mind, body, and social side of the individual’s efficiency, and wished to
morals.
prepare his pupils for a life of activity and service rather
than to create mere rhetoricians and pedants.

This he felt could be accomplished largely through a grammatical and
literary study of the Greek and Roman writers. The pupils learned from the
first to converse in Latin, and there were games with
Course and
methods. letters for the youngest and simple exercises to train them
in clear articulation and proper accent and emphasis.
Before they were ten, they were also drilled in memorizing and reciting
with intelligence the easier portions of the classic authors. This elocutionary

work, which was increased in length and difficulty as the boys grew older,
gave them an excellent grasp of vocabulary, rhythm, and style. As they
advanced, the pupils read a variety of Latin writers, and
Classics and
mathematical soon took up a study of the Greek authors and of the
subjects. Church Fathers. The mathematical subjects were also
taught with an enlarged scope, especially in their
applications to drawing, mensuration, and surveying. Because of the lack of
books, the teaching was carried on largely by dictation. Vittorino, however,
carefully studied the ability, interests, and future career of his pupils, and
selected the subjects and methods best suited to each intelligence. He thus
inaugurated a thoroughly elastic course for the school.
Physical and moral
and religious Physical and moral education were likewise insisted upon
training. quite as fully as intellectual. Vittorino introduced
especially fencing, wrestling, dancing, ball-playing,
running, and leaping, in all of which he was himself an expert, but the
purpose of these was to aid and stimulate the mental powers. He also by
both precept and example inculcated piety, reverence, and religious
observances. He believed, moreover, that truth and moral beauty could be
derived not only from the Christian authors, but also, by means of
expurgation, from the classic writings.

The Relation of the Court Schools to the Universities.—The court school
at Mantua had thus a most potent influence upon the educational practice of
the times, and trained a large number of distinguished ecclesiastics,
statesmen, scholars, and rulers. It doubtless was broadly typical of the court
schools and of the humanistic education of Italy in general. These court
schools, while taking pupils very early, often retained them until they were
twenty-one, and covered as much, if not more, ground than the arts course
of the university. They were, in a way, competitors of the
Rivalry and
adoption of the new older institutions. A student might, for the sake of a
learning by the degree, go from a court school to a university, but, as a
universities. rule, if what he wished were a general course, he would
be satisfied with the greater prestige that came from
being a pupil of one of the distinguished humanists that the court schools
were generally able to retain at their head. In fact, the want of hospitality, if
not actual hostility, of universities to the new learning, often stimulated the
growth of court schools. In many instances where the university was

especially conservative, a court school was set up by its side as a professed
rival. Gradually, however, the humanistic training crept into all the
universities of Italy, and the classical literature of the Greeks and Romans
largely took the place of the former grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Before
the close of the fifteenth century, Florence, Padua, Pavia, Milan, Ferrara,
Rome, and other cities had admitted the humanities to their universities, and
the other university seats were not long in following their example.

Decadence of Italian Humanism.—Toward the close of the fifteenth
century, however, this liberal education of the humanists
Humanism
eventually became in Italy began to be fixed and formal. Until the middle of
formalized and the century the ideals, content, and meaning of this
largely a drill in training were constantly expanding, but after that there
grammar.
was a gradual narrowing and hardening, and during the
early years of the sixteenth century the degeneration became complete. As
the subject-matter became institutionalized, the literature of the Greeks and
Romans failed more and more to be interpreted in terms of life. Emphasis
was placed upon the form rather than the content of the classical writings,
and grammatical drill was more and more emphasized as a means of formal
discipline. Before long the course was limited largely to Cicero, and the
new learning fell into that decadent state known as
‘Ciceronianism.’
‘Ciceronianism.’ It consisted simply in an attempt to
teach a perfect style with Cicero as a model, and to give one a
conversational knowledge of Ciceronian Latin. The structure, metaphors,
and vocabulary of all Latin writing had to be copied from the phrases of
Cicero, and the literature of the day became little more than a sequence of
model passages from that author.

The Spread and Character of Humanism in the Northern Countries.—
Such was the effect of the Renaissance upon education in the country of its
birth. But the humanistic training could not be confined
Through the
invention of to Italy. By the middle of the fifteenth century, with the
printing humanism invention of printing, the texts of the classic authors were
leaped the Alps. rapidly multiplied and spread everywhere. The
Renaissance and the classic literature leaped the Alps,
and made their way into France, the Teutonic countries, England, and
elsewhere. At first, humanistic scholars wandered into the North, soon

others were invited in large numbers by patrons of learning, and, at length,
students from the Northern countries thronged into Italy for instruction.
Towards the close of the fifteenth century the humanists outside the
peninsula became very numerous, and during the sixteenth century the
movement came to its height in the Northern lands.

But the character and effects of the Renaissance and humanism in the North
differed greatly from those in the country of their origin. The peoples of the
North, especially those of Germanic stock, were by nature more religious
than the brilliant and mercurial Italians. With them the Renaissance led less
to a desire for personal development, self-realization, and
Less individual and
more social in the individual achievement, and took on more of a social and
North. moral color. The prime purpose of humanism became the
improvement of society, morally and religiously, and the
classical revival pointed the way to obtaining a new and
Use of Greek and
Hebrew. more exalted meaning from the Scriptures. Through the
revival of Greek, Northern scholars, especially the
German and English, sought to get away from the ecclesiastical doctrines
and traditions, and turn back to the essence of Christianity by studying the
New Testament in the original. This suggested a similar insight into the Old
Testament, and an interest in Hebrew was thereby aroused. In consequence,
to most people in the North a renewed study of the Bible became as
important a feature of humanism as an appreciation of the classics.

The Development of Humanism in France.—In France humanism
appeared early. In 1458 a professorship of Greek was established at the
University of Paris, but the humanistic movement did not amount to much
in France until it was stimulated by the expeditions of
Expeditions of
French kings into Charles VIII (1494) and Louis XII (1498) into Italy.
Italy. These undertakings of the monarchs did not attain the
military and political objects intended, but through them
France came into direct contact with humanism at its sources, and a definite
impression was made upon French art, literature, and education. Even then,
owing to the conservatism of the university, the new learning met at first
with formidable opposition. Happily, it found an
Francis I,
influential patron in the youthful Francis I (r. 1515-1547).

French Humanistic Educators and Institutions.—Under the protection of
Francis, many prominent humanistic scholars and
and Budæus.
educators, like Budæus (1468-1540), appeared, classical
manuscripts were collected, Greek and Latin authors were translated,
treatises on humanistic education were produced, and the College of
France, with chairs of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, was established (1530).
Humanism was also introduced into various colleges in Paris and Bordeaux
by such scholars and practical teachers as Corderius
Corderius, and
Ramus. (1479-1564) and Ramus (1515-1572), and many text-
books and editions of the classics were published. Soon
most of the schools of France responded to the new training. It would
hardly be possible to consider many of them, but a brief description of the
course and administration in vogue at the College of
College of
Guyenne. Guyenne, taken from an account of one of its teachers,
may prove illuminating. This college contained ten
classes in secondary work, and two years more in philosophy, which
partially overlapped the faculty of arts in the university. Latin and religion
were taught throughout the secondary school, and Greek, mathematics,
rhetoric, and declamation could be taken in the last three or four classes.
The pupils were introduced to the rudiments of Latin through the
vernacular, and developmental methods and enlivening disputations were
used. Probably the general conditions here were typical of the French
humanistic schools everywhere during the sixteenth century.

Humanism in the German Universities.—Before humanism was well
established in France, however, it had also spread through the Teutonic
countries. By the end of the sixteenth century the German
Erfurt and other
existing universities had begun to adopt the new learning. In 1494
universities. Erfurt established a professorship of Poetry and
Eloquence, which covered the field of classic literature,
and lectures on humanistic subjects were before long given in Leipzig,
Heidelberg, Tübingen, Ingoldstadt, and Vienna. Likewise,
New universities.
a number of new universities, Wittenberg, Marburg,
Königsberg, and Jena, were started upon a humanistic basis, and before the
middle of the sixteenth century humanism prevailed in practically all of the
German universities.

The Hieronymians and Their Schools.—The earliest factor in Germanic
humanism, however, appeared in the education furnished by the
Hieronymians, or Brethren of the Common Lot. For the
At first instruction
only in Bible and instruction of the poor, this order had started schools, or
vernacular, established teachers in institutions already existing,
throughout the Netherlands, Germany, and France. At
first, they stressed instruction in the Bible and the vernacular, but, as the
Italian influence began to be felt in the upper countries,
but humanism
added. they broadened the course by the addition of classic
literature and Hebrew, and the schools soon became
recognized centers of humanism and intellectual interests. The pupils that
were trained there strengthened the new learning as teachers in the
universities and schools throughout Germany and the Netherlands. The first
educator of importance to introduce humanism into the
Wessel, Agricola,
Reuchlin, Hieronymian training seems to have been Wessel (1420-
1489). He was preëminently interested in teaching, and
among his earliest pupils of distinction were Agricola (1443-1485), who
had a most potent influence in introducing classics, and
and
Reuchlin (1455-1522), who taught the classics and
Hebrew at various universities, and produced a monumental grammar and
lexicon upon the latter subject. An even more noteworthy teacher was
Wimpfeling (1450-1528), who became professor, dean,
Wimpfeling.
and rector at Heidelberg. He lectured upon the classical
authors and the Church Fathers, and wrote a number of treatises upon
education, in which he held to the attitude of Northern humanism that all
learning is vain which does not lead to the advancement of mankind. But,
while a true reformer, he never broke from the Church.

Erasmus, Leader in the Humanistic Education of the
Attitude of
Erasmus. North.—A similar attitude was held by Erasmus (1467-
1531), the greatest of the humanists trained by the
Hieronymians. While he was bitterly opposed to the corruption and
obscurantism of ecclesiastics, he believed that the remedy lay, not in a
division of the Church, but in the study of the classics and the Church
Fathers, and in the general removal of ignorance.
His text-books,
Accordingly, to advance education, he assisted in the
preparation of Lily’s Latin grammar, translated into Latin the Greek

grammar of Theodore of Gaza, and wrote a work on Latin composition,
called De Copia Verborum et Rerum, and an elementary text-book of Latin
conversation on topics of the day, known as Colloquies. Similarly, he
produced treatises on the New Testament, and popularized the Gospels and
Church Fathers through paraphrases. Even better known
satires,
are the satires that he wrote in Latin to reform the abuses
and foibles of his times. His Adages and Praise of Folly mercilessly scored
the absurdities and vices of the Church and the priesthood, and in his
Dialogue on Ciceronianism he ridiculed some of the narrower tendencies
into which humanism had fallen. He also made direct contributions to
educational theory in his Latin treatises on The Liberal
and educational
treatises. Education of Children, The Right Method of Study, and
Courteous Manners in Boys, which are almost modern in
some of their recommendations. Learning, morality, religion, and good
manners, he held, must be trained together, and education must be open to
everyone, according to his or her ability. It should be started in infancy by
the mothers, and reading, writing, drawing, and some knowledge of familiar
animals and objects taught by informal methods. At seven the boy is to be
given a thorough training in the Scriptures, Church Fathers, and the
classics, and the content rather than the language and form of these works is
to be stressed.

The Development of Gymnasiums: Melanchthon’s Work.—It can thus
be seen what a profound effect the humanists trained in the Hieronymian
schools had upon the Teutonic universities and other educational
institutions. But there sprang up another set of schools, known as
Gymnasien, that was an even more typical and lasting
Developed out of
old schools for institutional development of the Northern Renaissance.
benefit of These ‘gymnasiums’ grew largely out of the old cathedral
municipalities. and upper burgher schools, and were established for the
benefit of the municipality, rather than for State and
Church. Their development was gradual, but they were given their first
definite shaping by Melanchthon (1497-1560). After a thorough humanistic
training from his great-uncle, Reuchlin, and from the universities at
Heidelberg and Tübingen, that scholar had become associated with Luther
at the University of Wittenberg, and was requested by the Elector of Saxony
in 1528 to organize the schools in his state. The ‘Latin Schools,’ which he

planned for every town and village of the electorate, were
Latin schools for
Electorate of divided into three classes, and the work in Latin and
Saxony. religion was adapted to the grade. Not even Greek or
Hebrew appeared in the course; much less the vernacular,
mathematics, science, and history. Nevertheless, it was from these
municipal Latin schools, when the course had been somewhat modified and
expanded, that the ‘gymnasium’ may be said to have sprung.

Sturm at Strassburg.—A further step in fixing the type and the first use of
the term ‘gymnasium’ are found in the case of the classical school
organized by Johann Sturm (1507-1589) at Strassburg in 1538. Here during
his forty-five years as rector, Sturm worked out a gymnasial course of ten
classes, upon which the pupils entered at six or seven years of age. The aim
of this training he held to be ‘piety, knowledge, and
Piety, knowledge,
and eloquence as eloquence,’ meaning by the last an ability to speak and
ideals. write Latin readily. For ‘piety,’ the Lutheran catechism
was studied in German for three years, and in Latin for
three years longer. The Sunday Sermons were read in the
Course of the ten
classes. fourth and fifth years, and the Letters of Jerome also in
the fifth year, while the Epistles of St. Paul were carefully
studied from the sixth year through the rest of the course. On the
‘knowledge’ and ‘eloquence’ side, Latin grammar was begun immediately
and the drill continued for four years, during which the pupil passed
gradually from memorizing lists of words used in everyday life and reading
dialogues that embodied them to the translation of Cicero and the easier
Latin poets. In the fourth year exercises in style were begun, and this was
accompanied by a grammatical and literary study of Cicero, Vergil, Plautus,
Terence, Martial, Horace, Sallust, and other authors, together with letter
writing, declamation, disputation, and the acting of plays. Greek was begun
in the fifth year, and after three years of grammatical training,
Demosthenes, the dramatists, Homer, and Thucydides were undertaken.

Formalism in the Gymnasiums.—This training, like that of the Italian
humanists, soon became set, formal, and mechanical.
Formalism,
While other authors than Cicero were read, the object
was to acquire an ability to read, write, and speak Ciceronian Latin, and
words, phrases, and expressions were carefully committed. The main

emphasis throughout was upon form, with little regard for content, and the
Latin and Greek were largely regarded as an end in themselves. Yet the
gymnasium of Sturm was an enormous success, and was soon crowded with
students. His pupils became the headmasters of all the
but wide influence.
most prominent schools, and through his wide
correspondence with sovereigns and educators, the course of study
formulated by Sturm became a model not only for Germany, but, in a sense,
for the rest of Europe. At any rate, most of the existing secondary schools in
Germany, and many founded later, became gymnasiums. The majority of
the Hieronymian schools soon adopted the gymnasial course. This was also
the case with the Fürstenschulen, or ‘princes’ schools,’ a type of institution
started in 1543 by Duke Moritz of Saxony to train well-prepared officials
for Church and State at public expense, and afterward absorbed into the
gymnasial system. And the gymnasiums have to-day changed but little from
Sturm’s organization. Owing to the later influence of realism, the addition
of mathematics, modern languages, and the natural sciences has somewhat
mitigated the amount of classics prescribed, but otherwise the German
gymnasiums adhere to their formal humanism as tenaciously as in the
sixteenth century.

The Humanistic Movement in England: Greek at Oxford and
Cambridge.—In its northward march the humanistic education also
effected profound changes in England. By the middle of the fifteenth
century many former students of Oxford began to study at various
humanistic centers in Italy. But the influence of such
Grocyn and
Linacre. innovators was scarcely felt until Grocyn and Linacre,
who had gone to Florence about 1488, undertook to
introduce Greek into education upon their return home. Grocyn (1442-
1519) became the first lecturer on Greek at Oxford, but he was greatly
assisted in the humanistic training by Linacre (1460-1524), although his
lectureship was nominally on medicine. Among their pupils were Erasmus,
More, and Colet. Humanistic education did not reach
Erasmus, Colet, and
More. Cambridge, however, until the close of the fifteenth
century, but, with the progress of the sixteenth, that
university rapidly overtook her sister institution. The real development
began when Erasmus, while a professor of theology at Cambridge (1510-
1514), consented also to lecture upon Greek as a labor of love. Erasmus was

succeeded by a number of lecturers, and in 1540 the new regius
professorship was held for four years each by the great
Cheke and Ascham.
teachers, Cheke (1514-1557) and Ascham (1515-1568).

Humanism at the Court.—As Cheke became private tutor to Prince
Edward and Ascham to Princess Elizabeth, an Hellenic atmosphere was
soon promoted in royal circles. A powerful assistance to the development of
humanism was also found at the court through the
More and Wolsey.
influence of More, who was especially close to Cardinal
Wolsey, and so for a time to the king, Henry VIII. A number of treatises
upon humanistic education were written by members of the court, like More
and Vives; while Ascham produced his Scholemaster, a
Ascham’s
Scholemaster. well-known work on teaching Latin and Greek by
‘double translation.’ This famous method consisted in
having the child translate a passage into English, and then, after an hour,
render it back into the original and have the master compare it with the text.

Colet and His School at St Paul’s.—The humanistic changes in English
education, however, were not limited to the universities and the court. The
schools also felt the effect of the new movement, and the most important
factor in bringing this about was the foundation of St.
Religious training
combined with the Paul’s School in 1509 by Colet. This scholar devoted
classics. most of the fortune left him by his father to establishing a
humanistic school in St. Paul’s churchyard, dedicated to
‘the child Jesus.’ The institution was thus an outgrowth of Northern
humanism, and combined religious training with a study of the classics. In
connection with certain Latin authors and Church Fathers, the pupils
studied the catechism in English, the Latin Grammar of Lily, who was the
first headmaster of the school, and the De Copia of Erasmus. St. Paul’s
school trained a long list of brilliant scholars, literary men, clergy, and
statesmen, and became the immediate model for a host of other institutions.
There were in existence at the time St. Paul’s was
Influence upon
other grammar founded some three hundred ‘grammar’ schools of
schools. various types. These had come down from the Middle
Ages, and their chief purpose had been the training of
young men for the priesthood. Their curriculum was usually of the
mediæval monastic type, but they soon felt the influence of the new school.

Those which survived the general dissolution of ecclesiastical foundations
by Henry VIII and Edward VI were gradually remodeled on the classical
basis of St. Paul’s. New schools were also established in accordance with
the humanistic ideals.

Humanism in the English ‘Grammar’ Schools.—But the humanism of
the ‘grammar’ schools in England, as in Italy and Germany, soon became
narrow and formal. The purpose of humanistic education came to be not so
much a real training in literature as a practical command of Latin as a
means of communication in all lands and ages.
Soon became
narrow and formal. Accordingly, the training became one of dictionaries,
grammars, and phrase-books. Expressions and selections
were culled from authors and treasured in notebooks, and the methods
became largely memoriter and passive. The formalism into which the
schools of England had thus fallen by the seventeenth century is depicted in
Brinsley’s Ludus literarius: or the Grammar Schoole, a work intended to
ridicule and reform these conditions. It indicates that the training in Latin
was devoted to drill in inflecting, parsing, and construing a fixed set of
texts. Lily’s Grammar was memorized by the pupils, and references to it
were glibly repeated, with little understanding of their meaning. All
conversation was based upon some phrase-book, like the Colloquies of
Corderius, and a Latin theme had to be ground out each week.

English ‘Grammar’ and ‘Public’ Schools To-day.—Although reforms
have since been made in many of these directions, the organization and the
formal humanism of the English ‘grammar’ school have been preserved in
principle even to this day. Mathematics, modern
Largely unchanged.
languages, and sciences have been added, and a ‘modern
side’ has been established as an alternate for the old course, but the classics
are still the emphasized feature, and, to a large degree, the drill methods
prevail. But, while it was originally intended that the grammar schools
should, by means of the endowment, be open to rich and poor alike,
because of the great increase in expenses, necessary and unnecessary, there
are now not many opportunities for any one in the lower classes of society
to attend a grammar school. Similarly, a distinction has come to be drawn
between ‘grammar’ and ‘public’ schools, although it is
The great ‘public’
schools. not a very clear one. In general, a ‘public school’ has a

more aristocratic and wealthier patronage. Nine ‘great public schools’ were
recognized by the Clarendon Commission in 1864,—Winchester (Fig. 17),
Eton, St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Rugby, Harrow, Merchant
Taylors’, and Charterhouse; but several other old schools and a number of
the stronger foundations of Victoria’s reign are generally admitted, and
many others claim the dignity of the name that would not be considered
eligible outside of the immediate locality.

The ‘Grammar’ Schools in the American Colonies.—It was after these
‘grammar’ schools of the mother country that the first
First American
secondary schools secondary schools in America were modeled and named.
modeled after In many instances the fathers of the colonies, such as
English. Edward Hopkins, William Penn, and Roger Williams, had
been educated in the grammar schools of England, and
naturally sought to model the institutions in their new home after them as
nearly as the different conditions would permit. The Boston Latin
(Grammar) School was founded as early as 1635 (Fig. 23), and other towns
of Massachusetts,—Charlestown, Ipswich, Salem, Dorchester, Newbury,
Cambridge, and Roxbury, also before long established grammar schools.
Similarly, towns of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and the other colonies, had in many cases founded grammar
schools before the close of the century. Moreover, the legislatures of
Massachusetts (1647) and Connecticut (1650) soon ordered that a
‘grammar’ school be established in every town having one hundred
families. The American grammar schools, like their prototypes, were
secondary and sustained no real relation to the elementary schools. They
were mostly intended to fit pupils for college, although sometimes the
college had not yet been established, and thus to furnish a preliminary step
to preparation for the Christian ministry. Hence their course consisted
chiefly in reading the classics and the New Testament, and used among its
texts Lily’s Grammar and the Colloquies of Corderius. And while the hold
of formal humanism upon secondary education was somewhat relaxed
during the subsequent stages of the ‘academy’ and the ‘high school,’ the
formal classical training was considered the only means of a liberal
education until well into the nineteenth century.

a. Drawing of Winchester College and its inmates by Warden
Chandler of New College, Oxford, in 1460. The picture
reveals the relationship of Winchester to the old monastic
institutions, before it became humanistic.

b. Eton College in 1688, from the drawing of David Loggan.

Fig. 17.—Great English Public Schools.

The Aim and Institutions of Humanistic Education.—It can now be seen
how far the ideals of humanism had departed from those of the mediæval
period. The ‘otherworldly’ aim, the monastic isolation, and the scholastic
discussions had given way to the interests of this life,
Interests of this life.
personal and social development, and a study of the
classics. In the North the movement took on rather a different color from
what it did in the peninsula that gave it birth. While Northern humanism
was narrower in not concerning itself so much with self-culture, personal
expression, and the various opportunities of life, it had a wider vision
through interesting itself in society as a whole and in endeavoring to
advance morality and religion. It was democratic and
More social and
moral in the North, social in its trend, where Italian humanism was more
and more individual aristocratic and individual.
in Italy.

In Italy the chief educational institutions resulting from the humanistic
movement were the schools that arose at the brilliant courts of the city
tyrants. These institutions were sometimes connected with the universities,
and gradually the universities themselves were forced to admit the new
learning to the curriculum. In the North a number of new
Organization,
institutions—Hieronymian schools, princes’ schools,
gymnasiums, and grammar schools—were developed from humanism, and
the existing institutions soon showed the influence of the movement, but all
of them stressed moral and religious studies, as well as classical.
Everywhere the curriculum of the humanistic foundations
content,
consisted mostly in the mastery of Latin and Greek, but
in the North the renewal of Greek meant also a study of the New and Old
Testaments and the Church Fathers. Where the Italian Renaissance re-
created the liberal education of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian,
the movement in its Northern spread found in the classical revival a means
of moral and religious training. But just as humanism in
methods,
Italy by the beginning of the sixteenth century had
degenerated into mere Ciceronianism, so the humanistic education in the
North, after about a century of development, began to grow narrow, hard,
and fixed. By the middle of the sixteenth century the spirit of criticism,
investigation, and intellectual activity had begun to abate, and by the
opening of the seventeenth humanism had been
and effect.
completely formalized. In the study of the classics all
emphasis was placed upon grammar, linguistics, and style; form was
preferred to content; and methods became memoriter and imitative.
Humanism had largely performed its mission, and a new awakening was
needed to revivify education and society in general.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chaps. XII-XIV; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. VI. An interesting interpretation of the
Renaissance both in Italy and the North is found in Adams, G. B.,
Civilization during the Middle Ages (Scribner, 1894), chap. XV. An account
of the movement, including its educational aspects in Italy, is found in
Burckhardt, J., Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Sonnenschein,
London, 1892; Macmillan), vol. I, especially part III; Symonds, J. A.,

Renaissance in Italy (Holt, Scribner), vol. II, especially chaps. III-VIII; or
Symonds’ Short History of the Renaissance (Holt, 1894), especially chaps. I
and VII, and IX-XI. Woodward, W. H., gives us a vivid account of the
educational work of Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators
(Cambridge University Press, 1897), and of Erasmus concerning Education
(Cambridge University Press, 1904), and of Education during the
Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1906) as a whole. Peter Ramus
and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Macmillan,
1912), by Graves, F. P., furnishes some idea of conditions in France. The
Italian Renaissance in England (Columbia University Press, 1905),
especially chap. I, is succinctly described by Einstein, L.; and an account of
Colet and St. Paul’s School can be found in Barnard, H., English Pedagogy,
second series, pp. 49-117.

CHAPTER XIII

EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE REFORMATION

OUTLINE

Luther’s educational positions are most fully revealed in his well-
known Letter and Sermon. He holds that education should prepare for
citizenship, and should be state-supported, and these recommendations
were somewhat embodied in actual schools by his associates.

Zwingli was killed before he could greatly influence education, but the
educational institutions of Calvin spread rapidly through Switzerland,
France, Netherlands, Puritan England, and Scotland.

In England Henry VIII and Edward VI confiscated the property of
some three hundred monastic and other ecclesiastical schools, but
subsequently many of these were refounded.

The Jesuit colleges were organized to extend Catholic Christianity. The
lower colleges were humanistic, and the higher taught ‘philosophy’
and theology. The teachers were trained, and the methods, though
memoriter and emulative, were effective. The influence of the Jesuit
colleges was phenomenal, but they have failed to meet new conditions.

The Port Royalists held that reason was more important than memory,
but, while their ‘little schools’ stressed vernacular, logic, and geometry,
they offered nothing beyond the best elements in the education of the
past.

Elementary and industrial education was given an impulse for the
Catholics by the schools of the Christian Brothers. They also opened
training schools for teachers, and perfected the ‘simultaneous’ method.

Among the Protestants and some Catholics in Germany, Holland,
Scotland, and certain of the American colonies, the Reformation
inclined toward universal elementary education and control of the
schools by the state. The secondary schools in Protestant countries also
came largely under civic authorities, although the clergy still taught
and inspected them; while Catholic secondary education was furnished
mostly by the Jesuit colleges. In many instances the universities turned
Protestant; and new universities, Protestant and Catholic, were
founded.

The Relation of the Reformation to the Renaissance.—The series of
revolts from the Catholic Church, generally known collectively as the
‘Reformation,’ may be regarded as closely connected with the Renaissance.
As shown in the last chapter, humanism in the North led to a renewed study
of the Scriptures and a reform of ecclesiastical doctrines and abuses, and
took on a moral and religious color. Reformers arose, like Wimpfeling and
Erasmus, who, while remaining within the Church, sought to purify it of
corruption and obscurantism. But the Church at first stubbornly resisted all
efforts at internal reform. Its immense wealth, large
A series of revolts
from the Church numbers, and training enabled it for a long time to thwart
accompanied the spirit of the age, and a condition of ecclesiastical
Northern upheaval followed. Revolts against papal authority
humanism.
ensued in various parts of Europe north of Italy, and were
furnished support by the awakened intellectual and social conditions of the
sixteenth century. The result was the establishment of a church, or rather a
set of churches, outside of Catholic Christianity. While each revolt had
some peculiarities of its own, there were underlying them all certain general
causes that indicated their relation to the Renaissance.

The Revolt and Educational Works of Luther.—Even the attitude of
Martin Luther (1483-1546) seems to have been bound up with the
tendencies of the day. Apparently he had at first no idea of breaking from
the Church, and supposed that the ninety-five theses he nailed to the church
door at Wittenberg (1517) were quite consistent with Catholic allegiance.
But even before this he had attacked Aristotle and
In his revolt, Luther
relied upon the scholasticism with great vigor, appealing to primitive
Christianity and the right of free thought, and thus

individualistic spirit
identified himself in spirit with the Northern
of the times.
Renaissance. And two years later, in his contest with Eck,
when he was actually led to deny the authority of both pope and council, he
was evidently relying upon the humanistic and individualistic atmosphere
of the times.

When once he had revolted, Luther gave much of his time to promoting the
reform and education of the masses by writing. All his works, whether
religious or pedagogical, were clearly intended, in a broad sense, to be
educational. After his condemnation at the Diet of Worms
His translation of
the Bible (1521), when he had taken refuge at the Wartburg, he
undertook to awaken the minds and hearts of the common
people by a translation of the Greek Testament. Contrary to general opinion,
a large number of translations had preceded that of Luther, and their
popularity must have proved suggestive to him, but his edition was
unusually close to the colloquial language of the times. A dozen years later,
he had completed a translation of the entire Bible, which contributed greatly
to education by getting the masses to read and reflect. For
and his catechisms.
the further instruction of the people, he also followed the
fashion of the day in producing two catechisms, one for adults and the other
for children, together with many tracts, addresses, and letters, filled with
allusions to the organization and methods of education. But the documents
which most fully reveal his educational positions are his
His Letter and
Sermon. Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of All Cities of
Germany in behalf of Christian Schools (1524), and his
Sermon on the Duty of Sending Children to School (1530).

Luther’s Ideas on Education.—The purpose of education, Luther
everywhere holds, involves the promotion of the State’s welfare quite as
much as that of the Church. The schools were to make
Civic aim.
good citizens as well as religious men. Educational
institutions should, on that account, be maintained at public expense for
every one,—rich and poor, high and low, boys and girls, alike, and
attendance should be compelled by the civic authorities.
Industrial and
academic training. Realizing that some pupils may find it hard to give the
time to school, Luther planned that “they should spend an
hour or two a day in school, and the rest of the time in work at home, learn

some trade and do whatever is desired, so that study and work may go on
together.” But he also desired a more academic course “for the brightest
pupils, who give promise of becoming accomplished teachers, preachers,
and workers.” In any case, Luther naturally believed that the chief studies
should be the Bible and the catechism. But, as a Northern humanist, he
recommended the ancient languages—Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—for the
light they would throw on the Scriptures and the patristic
Enlarged content.
writers. He likewise approved of rhetoric and dialectic,
which were very valuable subjects in those days of controversy; and he
made a decided advance in advocating history, natural science, vocal and
instrumental music, and gymnastic exercises. History is advised, not only,
as was common with the humanists, for the sake of illustrating moral truth,
but also for the purpose of understanding social institutions. The study of
nature was intended to reveal “the wonders of Divine Goodness and the
omnipotence of God.” Gymnastics he considered of value both for the body
and the soul, and music a means of “driving away all care and melancholy
from the heart.” The methods he recommended were
Rational methods.
equally rational. He would utilize the natural activity of
children and not attempt to repress them, and would make use of concrete
examples, wherever possible. Languages he would teach less by grammar
than by practice. This belief in the importance of selecting the proper
content and method in education led him to rate the function of the teacher
as higher, if anything, than that of the preacher.

The Embodiment of Luther’s Ideas in Schools by His Associates.—
These recommendations of Luther were largely embodied in actual
institutions by his associates. The year after his Letter to the Mayors was
published, the Protestants were requested by the Count of Mansfeld to
establish in Luther’s native town, Eisleben, a school that should put his
educational theories into practice, and this was performed
Melanchthon and
Sturm. by Melanchthon. The subsequent organization of Latin
schools throughout the Electorate of Saxony, and the
foundation of the gymnasium of Sturm at Strassburg upon the Protestant
basis have already been touched upon (pp. 114 ff.). But of fully as much
importance were the educational foundations of
Bugenhagen in
Northern Germany. Bugenhagen (1485-1558). While engaged in reorganizing
the churches in the cities and states of Northern Germany,

by his general ‘church orders’ to each, he made ample provision for schools
of the Lutheran type. For instance, at Hamburg in 1520 he organized a
single Latin school with a rector and seven teachers, together with a
German school for boys and one for girls in every parish. Eight years
afterward, the ‘church orders’ of Brunswick provided two classical schools,
two vernacular schools for boys, and four for girls, so located in the city
that all children could conveniently reach a school. Within a half dozen
years he made similar requirements for Lübeck, Minden, Göttingen, Soest,
Bremen, Osnabrück, and other cities, and throughout some entire states of
Germany, such as Holstein and his own native duchy of
Other associates.
Pomerania. The educational theories of Luther were also
put into practice in a number of schools taught by Trotzendorf, Neander,
and other pupils of Melanchthon.

The Revolt and Educational Ideas of Zwingli.—The revolt under Zwingli
(1484-1531) was more directly the outcome of Northern
Sprang from
Northern humanism than was that of Luther. Through Erasmus and
humanism. others he had come to believe that there was little basis in
the Bible for the traditional theology, and he carefully
read the accounts himself in the original Greek and Hebrew. After he took
charge of the cathedral at Zurich, he began his attack upon the dogmas and
traditions of the Church, and, by securing the support of the town, managed
in a fairly peaceful way to drop one form of the Church after another, until,
within five years, he had abolished even the mass. Zwingli likewise made
the extension of educational facilities a part of his reform. He founded a
number of humanistic institutions, and introduced elementary schools into
Switzerland. He also published a Brief Treatise on the Christian Education
of Youth (1523), which recommended a course of studies not unlike that of
Luther, except that, from his practical temperament, he
Schools and course
similar to Luther’s. did not mention history, but did add arithmetic and
surveying.

Calvin’s Revolt and His Encouragement of Education.—While
endeavoring to spread his reforms, Zwingli was slain in the prime of life.
His positions were maintained by his successor in the cathedral, but the
work was soon overshadowed and merged in the movement of Calvin
(1509-1564). Calvin’s break with the Church, like that of French Protestants

generally, also began through the influence of Northern
Also began through
Northern humanism and the study of the Greek Testament. He had,
humanism. however, received an excellent legal and theological
education, and did not content himself with merely
attacking Catholic doctrine, but was the first Protestant to formulate an
elaborate system of theology. The call of Calvin to reorganize the civil and
religious administration of the city of Geneva gave him an excellent
opportunity for working out his theories. Although he was much engrossed
in religious disputes, he established ‘colleges’ at Geneva
Calvin’s colleges
and elsewhere, and in other ways undertook to found
schools and promote education. He succeeded, too, in
and Corderius.
persuading his former teacher, Corderius (see p. 111), to
come to Switzerland, and organize, administer, and teach in the reformed
colleges.

The Colleges of Calvin.—Corderius here wrote four books of Colloquies,
with the purpose of training boys by means of conversation on timely topics
to speak Latin with facility, and from this work we can learn much of the
character of the Calvinistic colleges. Clearly the ideal
Aim, content, and
organization. was the ‘learned piety’ of Melanchthon, Sturm, and the
other Northern humanists and Protestants. An attempt
seems to have been made to teach Latin in such a way as to cultivate a
moral and religious life, and psalms were sung, public prayers offered, and
selections from the Bible repeated each day. We also know that in the seven
classes of a college at Geneva the pupils learned reading and grammar from
the Latin catechism, and then studied Vergil, Cicero, Ovid, Cæsar, Livy, and
Latin composition. Greek seems to have been begun in the fourth year, and,
beside classical Greek authors, the Gospels and Epistles were read.
Likewise, as in the other Reformation schools, logic and rhetoric were
studied in the higher classes. The colleges of this type not
Spread in
Switzerland, only spread rapidly among Calvin’s co-religionists in
France, Switzerland and France, but, as Geneva became a city of
Netherlands, refuge for all the oppressed, a regard for humanistic,
England, and
Scotland. religious, and universal education was absorbed by the
persecuted Netherlander, the English Protestants of
Mary’s time, and the Scotch under the leadership of Knox in the days of
Mary, Queen of Scots (1505-1572).

Henry VIII’s Revolt and Its Effect upon Education.—In England a
revolt from the Church likewise occurred. This also may
Due to personal
reasons. have been due in part to the investigative spirit of
Northern humanism, but the immediate cause of the
breach was the desire of Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) to control the national
Church, that he might divorce his wife, and there was at first little change in
doctrine. Once in ecclesiastical power, Henry began in 1536 to confiscate
the monastic lands and property, and enlarged the scope of his operations
until he had suppressed a large number of monastic, cathedral, collegiate,
hospital, and other schools. During the reign (1547-1553)
Suppression of
grammar schools. of his successor, Edward VI, the acts of suppression were
extended to chantry and gild foundations, and it is
estimated that, of the three hundred grammar schools that had come down
in England from the Middle Ages, but few were not destroyed under Henry
and Edward. Some, however, remained by the terms of the parliamentary
acts of suppression, and popular sentiment caused others to be refounded.
And during the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) and of the first two Stuart
kings (1603-1649) these foundations were greatly increased out of royal
funds or through the philanthropy of wealthy men. All of these schools, as
we have seen (p. 118), following the example of St. Paul’s, adopted the
Northern ideals of humanism and furnished a curriculum of classics and
religious training. The latter became based, of course, upon the teachings of
the Church of England.

Foundation of the Society of Jesus.—We may now turn back to the
Mother Church and see what efforts she was putting forth in behalf of
education during the period of Protestant revolts. Both before and after the
time of Luther there were reformers inside the Church who wished to
improve its practices without changing its administration, but the Catholics
in general felt it their chief duty to crush the Protestant heresy and recover
the ground they had lost. This resulted in a number of religious wars, in
which both sides displayed great bitterness and cruelty. But a more effective
and constructive instrument in advancing the interests of Catholicism was
the organization of the ‘Society of Jesus.’ This order was
Aimed to
strengthen the founded by Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556) in 1534. He
authority of the persuaded six fellow-students at Paris to join with him in
pope. devoting themselves to the conversion of the heathen, and

to strengthening the authority of the pope. Six years later, after considerable
opposition, the new order was recognized by the pope and began to add
rapidly to its numbers. The Jesuits have always striven first through
missionary labors to extend Catholic Christianity throughout the world, and
then by means of schools to hold their converts and educate all peoples to
papal allegiance.

Organization of the Jesuits.—The organization of the Society of Jesus
was outlined in its Constitution. This fundamental document of the order
received its final revision shortly after Loyola’s death, but the Ratio
Studiorum, which was an expansion of Part IV of the
The Constitution
and the Ratio Constitution and described the educational administration
Studiorum. in detail, was not finally formulated until 1599. It thus
summed up the experience of the Jesuit schools during
more than sixty years. The administration of the society has always been of
a military type. Loyola had originally started upon the career of a soldier,
and did not believe that any system could be effective unless it were based
upon implicit obedience to one’s official superiors. At the
The ‘general,’
head of the order is the ‘general,’ who is elected for life
and has vast administrative powers. As the society spread, the countries that
came under its control were divided into provinces, and at the head of the
Jesuit interests in each of these districts is the
‘provincial,’
‘provincial,’ who is appointed by the general for three
years. In each province there are various colleges, whose presiding officer,
or ‘rector,’ is chosen for three years by the general, but is
‘rector,’ and other
officials. directly responsible to the provincial and reports to him.
Similarly, within each college are ‘prefects,’ immediately
subordinate to the rector, but selected by the provincial; and under the
inspection of the prefects are the ‘professors’ or ‘preceptors.’

The Jesuit Colleges.—The Jesuits have never engaged in elementary
education, but have required that pupils know how to read and write before
being admitted to any of their schools. This may have been brought about in
the first place by the fact that the number of their teachers was limited, or
that the public elementary school was just coming to be regarded as of
importance, and secondary education of the humanistic type was
everywhere dominant. The Jesuit educational organization has, therefore,

consisted of ‘lower colleges’ with a gymnasia course, and
The lower colleges
are secondary and of ‘upper colleges,’ which are of university grade. Boys
humanistic, are admitted to the lower colleges at from ten to fourteen
years of age, and spend five or six years there. The first
three classes were at first devoted to a careful study of Latin grammar, and a
little of Greek; in the fourth year a number of the Greek and Latin poets and
historians were read; while the last class, to which two years were usually
given, took up a rhetorical study of the classical authors. Only slight
variations in the curriculum have ever been allowed since
with curriculum
largely unchanged. the Ratio Studiorum was issued, until the revision in
1832. In that year work in mathematics, natural science,
history, and geography was added in the lower colleges, but the classics still
compose the body of the course.

The full course of the upper colleges lasts seven or nine years,-the first
three in ‘philosophy,’ followed by four or six in theology.
The upper colleges
furnish training in The training in ‘philosophy’ now includes not only logic,
‘philosophy’ and metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and natural theology,
theology. but also work in algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
analytics, calculus, and mechanics, and such natural
sciences as physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and physiology. A
successful completion of the course leads to the degree of Master of Arts.
After the course in philosophy, most of the Jesuits teach in the lower
colleges five or six years before going on with the work in theology. In the
theological course four years are devoted to a study of the Scriptures,
Hebrew, and other Oriental languages, together with Church history, canon
law, and various branches of theology. After this one may elect a further
training of two years, to review the work in philosophy and theology, and to
prepare a thesis. After a public examination and defense of his thesis, the
successful candidate is awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Hence a
complete Jesuit training will take from eighteen to twenty years, and a
member of the order may be from thirty to thirty-five years of age before
completing his formal education.

The Jesuit Methods of Teaching.—The methods of teaching and the
splendid qualification of the instructors were from the first distinctive
features in the Jesuit colleges, especially when one considers how little

attention up to their time had been given to the
Trained teachers,
preparation of teachers. No one could teach in the lower
colleges who had not passed through the course in philosophy, while
professors in the universities had first to complete the theological course.
Instruction was generally imparted orally, and then memorized or taken
down in lecture notes. The method was the ‘prelection,’
the ‘prelection,’
which meant a preliminary explanation of the passage or
lectures upon the topic under consideration by the teacher. It consisted in
giving, first, the general meaning of the whole passage or proposition; then,
a more detailed explanation of the construction or phraseology; next similar
thoughts in other authors; fourthly, ‘erudition’, or informational comment
upon the passage; then, a study of the rhetorical figures; and finally, the
moral lesson to be drawn. Obviously, with such a method, great stress
would be placed upon memorizing, especially in the
memorizing,
lower colleges. To fix subjects firmly in mind, short
hours, few studies, and brief lessons were early found to
reviews,
be necessary. Likewise, reviews have always been
frequent and systematic, and the Latin motto of the Jesuit method declares
that “repetition is the mother of learning.” Each day begins with a review of
the preceding day’s work, and closes with a review of the work just
accomplished. Each week ends with a repetition of all that has been covered
in that time, and the last month of every year reviews the course of the year.
To maintain interest in the midst of so much memorizing and reviewing,
many devices to promote emulation are used. The pupils are arranged in
pairs as ‘rivals,’ whose business it is to check on the
and rivalry.
conduct and studies of each other (Fig. 18); and public
‘disputations’ between two sides are engaged in each week.

Value and Influence of the Jesuit Education.—The Jesuit system, then,
seems to have been in advance of that in the schools at the time of its
foundation. It was organized upon a systematic and
Systematic,
thorough basis, and was administered by a set of
splendidly trained teachers through the best methods that were known in
that day. The schools were interesting and pleasant, and
interesting, and
devoted, were free to all who had the ability and desire to attend.
The Jesuit teachers, too, were indefatigable and devoted
to their duty. The criticism that has been offered to this educational system

is based on its insistence upon absolute authority and the
but authoritative
and uniform. consequent opposition to the development of
individuality. The Jesuit courses, subjects, and methods
have become somewhat uniform and fixed. In the lower colleges they
depend largely upon memory and appeal to interest through a system of
rivalry, honors, and rewards. Such a system is likely to tend toward a
reproductive attitude in the pupil.

a. Jesuit College at Regensburg in 1600.

b. Plan of a Jesuit schoolroom of the seventeenth century. B
represents the teacher, C the monitors, and D, E, O, X,
and I various student officials. The numbered lines
represent rows of students, known as decuriae. When a
student was called upon, his ‘rival’ arose from the
corresponding place in the other group; and as each
recited, the other endeavored to correct him in some
error.

Fig. 18.—Education of the Jesuits.

Nevertheless, the Jesuits furnished the most effective education during the
latter half of the sixteenth, the entire seventeenth, and the early part of the
eighteenth centuries. The growth of their schools was
Phenomenal growth
of the number of phenomenal. By the death of Loyola (1556) there were
colleges and already one hundred colleges, and a century and a half
students. later they had increased to seven hundred and sixty-nine
institutions, spread throughout the world. The average

number of students in attendance at any of these colleges during the
seventeenth century was about three hundred, and in several of the larger
centers there were between one and two thousand, and the famous College
of Clermont (now Lycée Louis le Grand) at Paris is said to have run up to
three thousand. At a modest estimate, there must have been some two
hundred thousand students in the Jesuit colleges when they were at their
height. Their graduates seem to have become prominent
Prominent
graduates. in every important activity of life, and included a large
number of the noted authors, prelates, statesmen, and
generals of the time. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the
ideals and content of education had somewhat changed, and the Jesuits did
not adapt their course to the new conditions. Moreover, the Jesuits seem to
have become powerful, ambitious, and somewhat arrogant. They quarreled
frequently with bishops, other monastic orders,
Quarrels and
banishments. governments, and universities. Finally, after they had
been banished from France, Spain, and Portugal, in 1773
the pope himself dissolved the Society of Jesus. Forty years later the order
was restored, but, owing to the development of educational ideals and
organization and the increase of educational institutions, their work has
never since become relatively as effective or held as important a place in
education.

The Organization of the Education of the Port Royalists.—A type of
Catholic education radically opposed to that of the Jesuits was created by a
group of men belonging to the religious body known as the Jansenists. The
doctrines of the Jansenists were formulated in 1621 by Cornelius Jansen, a
professor in the University of Louvain. While striving to retain their place
within the Church, the Jansenists opposed the prevailing doctrines of
confession and penance, and adopted the rationalistic
Adopted
rationalistic philosophy of Descartes. They also held that humanity is
philosophy. naturally corrupt, except as it is watched and guided, and
that only a relatively few can be saved. These doctrines
probably influenced a body of Jansenists that established a new departure in
the way of education at the convent of Port Royal at Chevreuse. In 1643 the
‘Port Royalists’ endeavored to remove what few children they could from
the temptations of the world to a school started in this convent. Similar
institutions quickly sprang up in the vicinity and then spread through Paris.

To carry out their ideal of careful oversight, these schools usually took only
twenty to twenty-five pupils, and each master had under him five or six
boys, whom he never allowed out of his immediate supervision day or
night. Hence these institutions were known as ‘little
‘Little’ schools.
schools.’

The Port Royal Course and Method of Teaching.—Since the Port
Royalists held that character was of more importance than knowledge, and
reason was to be developed rather than memory, these
Reason rather than
memory. ‘little schools’ sought to impart an education that should
be sound and lasting, rather than brilliant. Unlike the
Jesuits, they did not start their pupils with Latin, but with the vernacular,
since this was within their comprehension. As soon as they possessed a
feeling for good literature, they began the study of Latin through a
minimum grammar written in French, and soon took up
Latin through the
vernacular. the Latin authors, rendering them into the vernacular.
Greek literature was treated in similar fashion. To train
the reason, the older pupils were also taught logic and
Logic and
geometry. geometry. The course of study, however, was mostly
literary, and had no regard for science or investigation.
Port Royal presented the best elements of the education of the past, but did
not see beyond it. The methods introduced some striking innovations. The
leaders in the Port Royal education departed from the alphabetic plan in
teaching their pupils to read, and developed a phonetic
Phonetic method.
method. The Port Royalists also refused to permit the use
of emulation and prizes in their schools, but their
Indifference.
exclusion of rivalry resulted in indifference. They were
never able to secure the energy, earnestness, and pleasing environment of
the Jesuit colleges. They did, however, succeed in inculcating a general
spirit of piety without the formal teaching of doctrine.

Closing of the Port Royalist Schools and Its Effects.—In 1661 the Port
Royalist schools were closed by the order of Louis XIV
Jesuits lost
sympathy. through the influence of the Jesuits. But this act cost the
Jesuits dearly. Not only did it lose them sympathy, but it
furnished the Port Royalists occasion to issue tracts against Jesuitism that
have injured its repute ever since. This closing of their schools also gave the

Port Royalists the opportunity of becoming educators in a larger sense by
producing a great variety of writings upon their system.
Port Royalists
produced Later on, too, Rollin (1661-1741), who was twice elected
educational rector of the University of Paris, summarized in his
treatises. Treatise on Studies the Port Royalist reforms wrought in
that institution.

La Salle and the Schools of the Christian Brothers.—The Port Royalists
were, however, like the Jesuits, engrossed with secondary and higher
education, and gave little heed to the education of all the people in the
rudiments. In fact, until toward the close of the seventeenth century, the
Catholics generally did not succeed in inaugurating any effective or
widespread movement toward elementary education.
Little elementary
education before La Numerous attempts before this were made through
Salle. catechism schools and various reformers and religious
orders, but teachers were scarce and often ignorant and
poorly trained, and there was little progress before the organization of the
Brothers of the Christian Schools through the self-sacrificing efforts of Jean
Baptiste de la Salle (1651-1719). The organization sprang out of a group of
five masters engaged in teaching schools for the poor in the city of Rheims
in 1679, but it was not until three years later that La Salle
Development of the
schools at Rheims: completed his regulations, founded the brotherhood, and
moved the members into a permanent home. The order
flourished, and neighboring towns soon endeavored to secure its members
as teachers in their schools for the poor. Within a year or two, four schools
in and about Rheims were placed under masters trained in the house of the
Christian Brothers, and a number of other institutions were soon organized
in the vicinity upon the same basis.

But, being unable to supply the constant demands for his teachers that came
from districts outside the towns, La Salle undertook to train boys who were
sent him by the rural clergy, and were expected to return to their homes to
teach after their training. To accomplish this, he established in 1684 a
‘seminary for schoolmasters’ in a wing of the house of the brotherhood, and
two other seminaries were opened in neighboring towns the following year.
Four years later La Salle opened a house for the
Paris,
brotherhood near Paris, and the Christian Brothers were

speedily requested to take charge of the schools of several parishes. Despite
the jealousy and opposition of the established order of schoolmasters and of
many parties in Church and State, the schools and seminaries of the
Brothers greatly increased in Paris, and were rapidly extended throughout
France. At Paris also La Salle started the ‘Christian academy,’ in which
drawing, geometry, and architecture were taught ambitious poor boys on
Sunday, and introduced boarding colleges for higher secondary training.
And these institutions likewise spread through France and the rest of
Europe (Fig. 19). In 1705 La Salle retired to the estate
and Saint Yon.
known as Saint Yon, near Rouen, and there opened a
home for the brotherhood. Here he also founded a famous boarding-school
in which he trained boys for soldiery, farming, trade, and various other
vocations. Before long he likewise organized in conjunction an industrial
training for youthful delinquents, and both the vocational school and the
‘protectory’ soon became models for many similar institutions in France
and elsewhere.

The Aim, Curriculum, and Method of the Christian Brothers’ Schools.
—The plan of the schools of the Christian Brothers was eventually worked
out and crystallized in a fixed system under the title of Conduct of Schools.
This code has not remained quite as definite and uniform as the Ratio
Studiorum of the Jesuits, for changes and revisions are permitted, and
modern methods and subjects have from time to time been introduced.
Considerable latitude, moreover, has been allowed to the individual houses
by the Superior General at the head of the order, and by the Brothers
Visitors, who have charge of the districts. The educational aim of the
Christian Brothers has been preëminently religious, and
Religious aim.
the chief means of attaining this have been strict
vigilance, good example, and catechetical instruction. The course has
included the studies of the best schools of the time, and
Besides rudiments
and religion, more added other more practical subjects. Besides the
practical subjects. rudiments—reading, writing, and arithmetic—and
religious instruction and good manners, mathematics,
history, botany, geography, drawing, architecture, hydrography, navigation,
and other technical subjects have often been taught, and in the industrial
schools a manual and vocational training has been furnished. La Salle
seems to have made a great advance, too, in educational economy by

perfecting and applying the ‘simultaneous’ method,
‘Simultaneous’
method. which had been practiced in a crude form by some of his
forerunners. By this method is meant grading the children
according to their capacity, and having those in each grade use the same
book and follow the same lesson under a single master, instead of
instructing each pupil individually, as was generally the custom then.
Likewise, the seminaries or training schools of the Christian Brothers
contributed much to the advancement of efficiency in
Training of
teachers. teaching. For the first time teachers of ability and training
were made possible for the elementary schools.

Influence of the Schools of the Christian Brothers.—The work of the
Christian Brothers has met with steady growth and development. By the
time of La Salle’s death (1719), there had come to be
Spread
twenty-seven houses of the order, with two hundred and
seventy-four brothers, educating about nine thousand pupils. Before the
close of the century these numbers had about quadrupled, and now they
have increased nearly a hundredfold since the founder’s day. During the
nineteenth century these institutions were established in all the states of
Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, and America. The educational system has
been much modified and expanded, and now includes colleges, technical
and industrial schools, academies and high schools,
and expansion of
the work. elementary and grammar schools, commercial schools,
asylums, and protectories. Thus La Salle and his schools
of the Christian Brothers have performed a great service for education in all
lines, but especially in the promotion and enrichment of elementary
training, which had previously been so neglected.

Aim and Content of Education in the Reformation.—It can now be seen
that, as a result of the Reformation, the religious and
Religious and
theological. theological aim of education at all stages became very
prominent with Catholics and Protestants alike. In the
elementary schools, beside the rudiments, the Scriptures, the Lord’s prayer,
the ten commandments, and the Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Anglican
creed and catechism were taught, and, with the Protestants, also the hymns
of the church. The courses in the secondary schools and universities
contained large religious elements, as well as the formal humanism into

which the Renaissance of the North had degenerated. Likewise, there was
furnished in all universities a training in dialectic, rhetoric, and theology for
the sake of efficient controversy with ecclesiastical opponents.

Effect of the Reformation upon Elementary Schools.—But while the
Catholics were inclined to leave the organization of education in the hands
of various religious bodies, the Protestants more often thought it wise to
have its support and control administered by the princes
Coöperation with
civil officials. and the state. Owing to this secular management and their
position on universal education, the Protestants, with the
exception of the Anglicans, who had altered but little in doctrine, were
inclined to establish state school systems and hold to the duty of providing
and requiring elementary education at public expense. In this way the germs
of the modern tendency toward universal, free, and compulsory education
began to appear, although they did not ripen until much later.

In the German states there were many illustrations of the
Germany,
spread of elementary education and civic control. As an
immediate result of Luther’s Letter to the Mayors in 1524, the city of
Magdeburg united its parish schools under one management and adopted
the Protestant ideals. So, in 1525, the school at Eisleben, organized upon a
Protestant basis (see p. 128), included elementary as well as secondary
work. Similar ideals and organization appear in the provision for ‘German’
schools in the ‘Church orders’ sent out by Bugenhagen (see pp. 128 f.) to
the Protestant cities and states of Northern Germany. A further step was
taken in 1528 when Melanchthon drew up a plan for schools throughout the
entire Electorate of Saxony. This, the first state school system in history,
was followed by one in Würtemberg, where in 1559 Duke Christopher
adopted an improvement upon the Saxon plan, which called for a religious
and elementary training for the children of the common people in every
village of the duchy. Brunswick in 1569, and Saxony in 1580, followed the
lead of Würtemberg in revising their school systems. Before the middle of
the next century, a number of other states of Germany, such as Weimar,
Hessen-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Hessen-Cassel, and Gotha
modeled elementary school systems after those of Saxony and Würtemberg.
While the Catholics did not in general maintain public elementary
education, the Christian Brothers and others undertook a great work in this

direction, and Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria even ordered throughout his
state the establishment of ‘German’ schools with instruction in reading,
writing, and the Catholic creed. This organization of universal education
continued its advance, despite the decimation and the general havoc upon
finance and education wrought by the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), and
by the end of the eighteenth century practically every village throughout the
German states had its Volksschule or ‘people’s school.’ These institutions
were under the direction of the pastor of each parish, and while actual
conditions may often have been somewhat below the statutory level and in
many cases were a wretched apology, every child not studying at a
secondary school was in theory obliged, between the ages of six and
thirteen, to attend one of these schools of the people (Fig. 20).

As a result of the Dutch Reformed movement, Holland
Holland,
also made early provision for instruction in religion,
reading, and writing. The Church at various synods, and civic authorities in
many statutes, recognized the need of universal training, and finally the
great Synod of Dort, by a combination with the civil government, in 1618
required every parish to furnish elementary education for
Scotland,
all. Similarly, through Knox, Scotland established
elementary schools under the control of the parishes. Preliminary steps in
this direction were taken by the Privy Council and the Scotch Parliament
early in the seventeenth century, and in 1646 the parliament further enacted
that there be “a Schoole founded, and a Schoole master appointed in every
Parish,” and provided that if a parish should fail in this duty, the presbytery
should have power to establish the school and compel the parish to maintain
it. Half a century later this school system was given over more fully to the
control of the State, but even then much of the old connection with the
Church was apparent. These schools gave instruction in reading, writing,
and religion, with the Bible as text, and have done a wonderful work in
raising the level of intelligence and affording an opportunity to the children
of the lower classes in Scotland. England herself continued to hold to
aristocratic and ‘selective’ education, and gave little heed to the
establishment of elementary schools; but the American
and the American
colonies. colonies, as far as they were founded by Calvinists or
Lutherans, provided early for elementary education (see
p. 189). The Puritan towns of the Massachusetts colony established schools

almost as soon as they were settled, and in 1647 the legislature enacted that
all towns with fifty families should provide an elementary school.
Connecticut followed the example three years later, and before the close of
the century, similar action was taken by New Hampshire and Vermont (see
pp. 197 and 199). Likewise, New Amsterdam and the villages of New
Netherlands followed the example of the Mother Country and provided
public schools in connection with each church through the support of the
Dutch West India Company or of the civil and ecclesiastical bodies jointly
(see pp. 193 f).

Fig. 19.—A school of the Christian Brothers. (Visit of James
II and the Archbishop of Paris to the school at Rouen.)

Fig. 20.—A Protestant school in a German village of the
sixteenth century. (Visit of the school committee and
catechising by the pastor.)

Effect of the Reformation upon the Secondary Schools.—While the
development of elementary instruction and state systems of education was
the most important educational outcome of the Reformation, the movement
had a somewhat similar effect upon the humanistic secondary education of
the time. In Protestant Germany the Latin schools and
Civic control
among Protestants, gymnasia came under the control of the princes and the
State rather than the Church, and gradually became the
backbone of the state school systems. But they stressed the religious
element in their curriculum, and the direct management
though direct
management of education was simply transferred to Protestant
through the Church. ministers or leaders. The schools were still taught and

inspected by representatives of the Church, but the form of the organization
and administration of education was radically changed. In England there
was a similar transfer of management to the Protestant clergy. The existence
of the schools had to be authorized and their teachers licensed by the
bishop, and they were at all times liable to visitation from ecclesiastical
authority. The grammar schools, however, were never organized like the
gymnasia, but each school remained independent of the rest and of any
national combination. Nor were the Calvinistic colleges united into a
national system, except where they came into Germany, when they were
absorbed into the system of the gymnasia. The state system of education
established by the Scotch parliament in the parishes, often gave secondary
training, as well as elementary. And in America the establishment and
control of the ‘grammar’ schools, inherited from the mother country, were
vested in the authorities of the state and the several
Catholic education
largely in hands of towns. On the other hand, the Catholic education in all
Jesuits. countries found its secondary schools largely in the
colleges of the Jesuits, and the subordination of the
individual to authority and the Church was insisted upon.

Influence of the Reformation upon the Universities.—In the case of the
universities, many remained loyal to Catholicism and a
Many universities
adhered to Catholic few new Catholic foundations grew out of the
authority. Reformation. All these adhered to the principle of
submission to ecclesiastical authority. But the majority of
the universities in the Protestant states of Germany followed their princes
when they changed from the old creed to the new.
Others changed to
Protestantism with Wittenberg, through its connection with Luther and
their princes. Melanchthon, was the first German university to become
Protestant, but others, like Marburg, Königsberg, Jena,
Helmstadt, and Dorpat followed rapidly. Altdorf and Strassburg were
developed out of gymnasia. The English universities, Oxford and
Cambridge, went over to Protestantism with the national Church. In
America, too, Harvard and other early colleges were closely connected with
the various commonwealths and with the Calvinistic or the Anglican
communion, according to the colony.

The Lapse into Formalism.—There came to be both in Catholic and
Protestant institutions a tendency to regard the subjects taught as materials
for discipline rather than as valuable for their content. The studies largely
became an end in themselves and were deprived of almost all their vitality.
The curriculum of the institutions became fixed and stereotyped in nature,
and education lapsed into a formalism but little superior to that of the
mediæval scholastics. The methods of teaching came to
Memory stressed,
rather than reason; stress memory more than reason. The Protestants had
authority claimed to depend less upon uncritical and obedient
emphasized; and acceptance of dogma than upon the constant application
individuality
repressed. of reason to the Scriptures, but they soon tended to
emphasize the importance of authority and the repression
of the individual quite as clearly as the Catholics, who definitely held that
reason is out of place and unreliable as a final guide in education and life.
Hence, except for launching the great conception of state support and
control of education, the Reformation accomplished but little directly
making for individualism and progress, either through the Catholic
awakening or the Protestant revolts. Education fell back before long into the
grooves of formalism, repression, and distrust of reason. There resulted a
tendency to test life and the educational preparation for living by a
formulation of belief almost as much as in the days of scholasticism.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. XV-XVI; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. VII. An excellent interpretative account
of the Reformation is that in Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle
Ages (Scribner, 1894), chaps. XVI and XVII. Painter, F. V. N., furnishes a
good translation of Luther on Education (Lutheran Publication Society,
Philadelphia). Richard, J. W., gives a good account of Melanchthon, the
Protestant Preceptor of Germany (Putnam, 1898), especially chaps. II-IV
and VII; Watson, F., of Maturinus Corderius, the Schoolmaster of Calvin
(School Review, vol. XII, nos. 4, 7, and 9); Graves, F. P., Ramus and the
Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Macmillan, 1912) of
conditions in France; and Leach, A. F., of the dissolution acts of Henry VIII
and Edward VI in English Schools at the Reformation (Constable, London,
1896), pp. 58-122. On the side of Catholic education, one should read

Schwickerath, R., Jesuit Education (Herder, St. Louis), chaps. III-VIII and
XV-XVIII; Cadet, F., Port Royal Education (Bardeen, Syracuse, 1899;
George Allen and Co., London) pp. 9-119; and Wilson, Mrs. R. F., Christian
Brothers (London, 1883), which gives an epitome of Ravelet, A., Life of La
Salle. The influence of the Reformation upon the German schools and
universities, both Protestant and Catholic, is shown in Nohle E., History of
the German School System (Report of the United States Commissioner of
Education, 1897-98, vol. I), pp. 30-40; and Paulsen, F., German Education
(Scribner, 1908), pp. 79-85.

CHAPTER XIV

EARLY REALISM AND THE INNOVATORS

OUTLINE

The intellectual awakening that appeared in the Renaissance and the
Reformation found another avenue for expression in early realism.

This movement had two phases: (1) humanistic realism, which
emphasized the content of classical literature; and (2) social realism,
which strove to adapt education to actual life. But the two phases
generally occurred together, and the classification of a treatise under
one head or the other is largely a matter of emphasis.

The influence of the two phases was mostly indirect, but through
social realism a special training arose in the Ritterakademien in
Germany, while Milton’s humanistic realism was embodied in the
‘academies’ of England, and afterward of America.

The Rise and Nature of Realism.—By the seventeenth century it is
obvious that humanism was everywhere losing its vitality and declining into
a narrow ‘Ciceronianism,’ and that the Reformation was hardening once
more into fixed concepts and a dogmatic formalism. The
A new channel for
the emancipation of awakened intellect of Europe, however, was tending to
the individual. find still another mode of expression in the educational
movement that is usually known as ‘realism.’ The process
of emancipating the individual from tradition and repressive authority had
not altogether ceased, but it was manifesting itself mainly through a rather
different channel. The movement of realism implied a
A method by which
‘real things’ may be search for a method by which ‘real things’ may be
known. known. In its most distinct and latest form,—‘sense
realism,’ it held that real knowledge comes through the
senses and reason rather than through memory and reliance on tradition,

and in this way it interpreted the ‘real things’ as being
‘Sense realism’
individual objects. Educational realism, therefore,
concerned itself ultimately with investigation in the natural sciences; and it
might well be denominated ‘the beginnings of the scientific movement,’
were it not that such a description neglects the earlier
and the earlier
realism. phases of the realistic development.

Humanistic Realism.—For, even before objects were regarded as the true
realities, there seems to have been an effort among some later humanists to
seek for the ‘real things’ in the ideas that were
‘Real things’ in
ideas, rather than represented by the written words. This broader type of
words. humanism, in consequence, tended to break from a
restriction to words and set forms and return to the
interest in the content of classical literature that marked the Renaissance
before its decline into formalism. It may, therefore, properly be called
‘humanistic realism.’ With its emphasis upon content usually went a study
of social and physical phenomena, in order to throw light upon the passages
under consideration. Illustrations of this humanistic realism are found in
many writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Milton’s Tractate as
an illustration. Milton (1608-1674), for example, while a remarkable
classicist himself, in his Tractate of Education objects to
the usual humanistic education with “its grammatic flats and shallows
where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable
construction”; and says of the pupil, “if he have not studied the solid things
in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be
esteemed as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother
dialect only.” And he would teach the Latin writers on agriculture, and the
Greek writers on natural history, geography, and medicine for the sake of
the subject-matter.

Social Realism.—But there was another phase of early realism, which
often appeared in conjunction with humanistic education, and may be called
‘social realism.’ Its adherents strove to adapt education to actual living in a
real world, and to afford direct practical preparation for
Preparation for
living in a real the opportunities and duties of life. It was generally
world. recommended as the means of education for all members
of the upper social class. It sought to combine with the

literary elements taught the clergy in the Middle Ages and the scholar in the
Renaissance, certain remnants of the old chivalric education as the proper
training for gentlemen. It held schools to be of less value as an agency for
educating the young aristocrats than training through a tutor and travel.
Hence an education in social realism usually included a
Its content.
study of heraldry, genealogy, riding, fencing, and
gymnastics, and involved a study of modern languages and the customs and
institutions of neighboring countries.

A good illustration of this type of education is found in the educational
essays of Montaigne (1533-1592). In the Education of
Montaigne’s
Education of Children he holds that virtue comes from experience and
Children as an breadth of vision rather than from reading, and declares:
example. “I would have travel the book my young gentleman
should study with most attention; for so many humors, so
many sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws, and customs, teach us to
judge aright of our own, and inform our understanding to discover its
imperfection and natural infirmity.” This training, too, he feels, should be
under the care of a tutor, who is to be a man of the world, one “whose head
is well tempered, rather than well filled.” While a gentleman has need of
Latin and Greek, Montaigne maintains that one should first study his own
language and those of his neighbors. He also stresses physical exercise, and
fears the training of boys near their mothers, who “will not endure to see
them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude fencer.”

An educational work based on social realism that has been studied even
more than the Essays of Montaigne is Some Thoughts
Locke’s Thoughts
better known. concerning Education by John Locke (1632-1704).
Locke states the aims of education in the order of their
value as ‘Virtue, Wisdom (i. e., worldly wisdom),
Aim of education.
Breeding, and Learning’; and holds that such a training
can be secured by the young gentleman only through a tutor, who “should
himself be well-bred, understanding the Ways of Carriage and Measures of
Civility in all the Variety of Persons, Times and Places, and keep his Pupil,
as much as his Age requires, constantly to the Observation of them.” In
considering the subject-matter of the training, he maintains that “besides
what is to be had from Study and Books, there are other Accomplishments

necessary for a Gentleman,—dancing, horseback riding,
‘Accomplishments’
as part of its fencing and wrestling.”
content.
The Relations of Humanistic to Social Realism.—
Humanistic and social realism, however, constantly appear together in the
works of the same author, and it is often difficult to distinguish a writer as
advocating one type or the other. The differentiation seems to be largely a
matter of emphasis. While one element or the other may
Difficult to
distinguish an seem to be more prominent in the treatise of a certain
author as of one author, the two phases of education are largely bound up
type or the other, as in each other. While Milton, for instance, is in the main a
can be seen in
Milton. humanistic realist and advises an education in languages
and books, he recommends that considerable time be
given, toward the end of the course, to the social sciences—history, ethics,
politics, economics, theology—and to such practical training as would bring
one in touch with life. He also specifically advocates the experience and
knowledge that would come from travel in England and abroad; and defines
education as “that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and
magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war.”
On the other hand, Montaigne, the social realist, seems
Montaigne,
quite as strenuous in urging a more realistic humanism. In
his essay, On Pedantry, he launches most vigorous ridicule against the
prevailing narrow humanistic education, with its memorizing of words and
forms, and insists: “Let the master not only examine him about the words of
his lesson, but also as to the sense and meaning of them, and let him judge
of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory, but that of
his understanding.”

And it is equally difficult to state whether humanistic or
and others.
social elements prevail in Locke’s Thoughts, the
Gargantua of Rabelais (1495-1553), the Positions of Mulcaster (1530-
1611), and other treatises of the period. It is true, of course, that in certain
other works written upon the training of the aristocracy, social realism is
more exclusively stressed. The titles of most of these reveal their content, as
can easily be seen in the case of such productions as Castiglione’s The
Courtier (1528), Elyot’s The Governour (1531),
Distinctive social
realists. Peacham’s The Compleat Gentleman (1622), and

Brathwaite’s The English Gentleman (1630). But, in most of the early
realistic works, humanistic and social elements are inextricably interwoven;
and humanistic and social realism, taken together, seem to constitute a
natural bridge from humanism over to sense realism.

The Influence of the Innovators upon Education.—There is, however, a
variety of other brilliant educational suggestions in each
Other suggestions
in the early realists. of these early realists. All of them hold to a broader and
better rounded training and more natural and informal
methods than those in vogue. Mulcaster even advocates universal
elementary education, the professional training of teachers, and the
education of girls, and undertakes to make a naïve analysis of the mind as
the basis of a philosophy of education. So suggestive have the
recommendations of the early realists proved to modern education that
these authors are often known as the ‘innovators.’ Yet their theories do not
seem to have affected greatly the educational practice of the times. They did
tend to disrupt traditionalism and the formal humanism, to bring education
into touch with society and preparation for real life, and
But their influence
was indirect. to popularize a wider content and a more informal
procedure, but their influence appeared through their
successors and later education rather than directly in the schools of the
period. Locke, for instance, in addition to the influence he had upon
Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and other reformers, must in some measure have been
responsible for the great development of the physical and ethical sides of
education in the public and grammar schools of England, together with the
tendency of these institutions to consider such aspects of rather more
importance than the purely intellectual. His plea for a tutor as the means of
shaping manners and morals has also probably had its effect upon the
education of the English aristocracy.

The Ritterakademien.—In the German states, on the other hand, there
arose at the courts during the seventeenth century an actually new type of
educational institution as the outgrowth of social realism. Here, in place of
the old humanistic education, there was developed a
Training for the
nobility in modern special training for the young nobles in French, Italian,
languages, chivalric Spanish, and English, in such accomplishments as courtly
arts, and the conduct, dancing, fencing, and riding, and in philosophy,
sciences.

mathematics, physics, geography, statistics, law, genealogy, and heraldry.
The educational institutions in which this training was embodied were
known as Ritterakademien or ‘academies for the nobles.’ Such academies
were founded at Colberg, Luneberg, Vienna, Wolffenbüttel, and many other
centers before the close of the century. They originally covered the work of
the gymnasia, although substituting the modern languages, sciences, and the
knightly arts that have been mentioned for the Greek and Hebrew, and
adding a little from the course of the university. Gradually, however, they
became part of the regular secondary system.
Absorbed into
secondary system.
The Academies in England.—Milton’s suggestions were
ultimately materialized in an even more influential type of school. In the
Tractate he had recommended that his ideal education be carried out in an
institution to be known as an ‘academy.’ Such a school was to be erected ‘in
every city throughout this land.’ It should train boys from the age of twelve
to twenty-one, and should provide both secondary and higher education.
‘Academies,’ based very closely upon this plan, were about a generation
later actually organized in a number of places by the
Milton’s
suggestions adopted Puritans. Under the harsh Act of Uniformity (1662) two
by Puritans after the thousand non-conforming clergymen were driven from
Act of Uniformity. their parishes, and in many instances found school-
teaching a congenial means of earning a livelihood, and
at the same time of furnishing higher education to the young dissenters,
who were excluded from the universities and grammar schools. The first of
these academies was that established by Richard
The first academies.
Frankland at Rathmill in 1665, and this was followed by
the institutions of John Woodhouse at Sheriffhales, of Charles Morton at
Newington Green, and of some thirty other educators of whom we have
record at other places. These academies were largely humanistic in their
realism, and, since their chief function was to fit for the ministry, they
included Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in their course, but they were also rich
in mathematics, natural and social sciences, modern
Their content.
languages, and the vernacular. The new tendency was
also broadened and amplified by Locke’s Thoughts (1693), which became
the great guide for the managers of the Puritan academies. In 1689, when
the Act of Toleration put non-conformity upon a legal footing, the
academies were allowed to be regularly incorporated.

The Academies in America.—Academies arose also in America. When the
number of religious denominations had greatly increased and the demands
upon secondary education had expanded, the ‘grammar schools’ (see pp.
120 f.), with their narrow denominational ideals and their limitation to a
classical training and college preparation, proved inadequate, and efforts
were made to organize academies as a supplement. There
Their rise as a
supplement to the may have been earlier academies in America, but the first
narrow ‘grammar well-known suggestion of an academy was made in 1743
schools’. by Benjamin Franklin. He wished to inaugurate an
education that would prepare for life, and not merely for
college. Accordingly, he proposed for the youth of Pennsylvania a course in
which English grammar and composition, penmanship, arithmetic, drawing,
geography, history, the natural sciences, oratory, civics, and logic were to be
emphasized. He would gladly have excluded Latin and other languages
altogether, but for politic reasons these courses were allowed to be elective.
Through the efforts of a number of leading citizens, such
The early
academies. an academy was opened at Philadelphia (Fig. 32), in
January, 1750 (although not chartered until July, 1753).
During the next generation a number of similar institutions sprang up,
especially in the middle and southern colonies. A great impulse was given
the movement by the foundation of the two Phillips academies,—one in
1780 at Andover, Massachusetts, and the other the next year at Exeter, New
Hampshire. The Dummer Grammar School was reorganized as an academy
in 1782, and the movement spread rapidly throughout New England during
the last two decades of the eighteenth century.

Shortly after the Revolution, owing in part to the inability
After the
Revolution the or unwillingness of the towns to maintain grammar
prevailing type of schools, and in part to the wider appeal and greater
secondary usefulness of the academies, the latter institutions quite
education.
eclipsed the former, and became for about half a century
the prevailing type of secondary school in the United States. They were
usually endowed institutions managed by a close corporation, but were
often largely supported by subscriptions from the neighborhood, and
sometimes subsidized by the state. Located in small
Support, location,
and functions. towns or villages, they served a wide constituency and
made provision for boarding, as well as day pupils.

Unlike the grammar schools, they were not originally intended to prepare
for the learned professions exclusively, but, as time passed, they tended
more and more to become preparatory schools for the colleges, instead of
finishing schools for the middle classes of society. The academies were also
the first institutions of secondary education to offer opportunities to women.
Many of them were co-educational, and others, frequently burdened with
the name of ‘female seminary,’ were for girls exclusively. Academies for
some time likewise furnished the only means of training teachers for the
elementary schools, and have generally played an important part in
education in the United States.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. XVII; and Great
Educators of Three Centuries (Macmillan, 1912), chaps. I and V; Monroe,
Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 442-460. An excellent edition of Milton’s
Tractate of Education is that by Morris, E. E. (Macmillan, 1895); of
Montaigne’s Education of Children that by Rector, L. E. (Appleton, 1899);
of Locke’s Thoughts concerning Education, and of Mulcaster’s Positions,
those by Quick, R. H. (Cambridge University Press, 1895, and Longmans,
1888, respectively); and of Rabelais’ Gargantua, that by Besant, W.
(Lippincott, Foreign Classics for English Readers). The works of
Castiglione, Elyot, Peacham, Brathwaite, etc., are also extant. For an
account of the Ritterakademien, see Nohle, E., History of the German
School System (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-98),
pp. 41 f., and Paulsen, F., German Education (Scribner, 1908), pp. 112-116;
and of the academies, Brown, E. E., The Making of Our Middle Schools
(Longmans, Green, 1902), chaps. VIII and IX.

CHAPTER XV

SENSE REALISM AND THE EARLY SCIENTIFIC
MOVEMENT

OUTLINE

In the seventeenth century scientific investigation developed rapidly,
and led theorists to introduce science into the curriculum and to
advocate a study of ‘real things.’

Bacon undertook to formulate induction, and while he did not
understand the importance of an hypothesis, he did much to rid the
times of a priori reasoning.

On the basis of sense realism, Ratich anticipated many principles of
modern pedagogy, but he was unsuccessful in applying his ideas.

Comenius (1) produced texts for teaching Latin objectively, (2)
crystallized his educational principles in the Great Didactic, and (3)
attempted an encyclopædic organization of knowledge. He wished to
make this knowledge part of the course at every stage of education,
and, while he was not consistently inductive, he made a great advance
in the use of this method.

Through sense realism, rudimentary science was introduced into the
elementary schools; the Ritterakademien and the pietist schools
stressed the subject; and professorships of science were founded in the
universities.

The Development of the Sciences and Realism.—The realistic tendency
did not pause with reviving the ideas represented by the words nor with the
endeavor to bring the pupil into touch with the life he was
Earlier realism a
transition to sense to lead. The earlier realism seems to have been simply a

realism. stage in the process of transition from the narrow and
formal humanism to a realism obtained through the
senses, which may be regarded as the beginning of the modern movement
to develop the natural sciences. Science had started to develop as early as
the time of the schoolman, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), but for three
centuries it was not kindly received. Even during the Renaissance the
Church had continued to oppose it bitterly, because it
Opposition to the
sciences. tended to conflict with religious dogma, although this age
did not object to the revival of the classics. Accordingly,
the latter subject became strongly intrenched in educational tradition, and
its advocates offered the most obstinate opposition to the sciences. Its
numerous representatives struggled hard to keep the sciences out of
education.

However, concomitant with the growth of reason and the partial removal of
the theological ban, there was developed a remarkable scientific movement,
with a variety of discoveries and inventions. For more than a millennium
the Greek developments in astronomy and physics had
Development of
physics and been accepted as final, but toward the close of the
astronomy in the sixteenth and during the seventeenth century these dicta
seventeenth were completely upset. The hypothesis of a solar system,
century.
which replaced the Ptolemaic interpretation, was
published by Copernicus (1473-1543); Kepler (1571-1630) explained the
motion of the planets by three simple laws; and, through the construction of
a telescope, Galileo (1564-1642) revealed new celestial phenomena. Galileo
also demonstrated that all bodies, allowing for the resistance of the air, fall
at the same rate; by means of the barometer, Torricelli (1608-1647) and
Boyle (1627-1691) proved the existing theories of a vacuum incorrect, and
formulated important laws concerning the pressure of gases; and Guericke
(1602-1686), inspired by their discoveries, succeeded in constructing an air-
pump. Investigations of this kind paved the way for the formulation of the
law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion by Sir Isaac Newton
(1642-1727), which united the universe into a single comprehensive system
and completed the foundations for modern mechanics.

Likewise, about the same time, the other great
Development of
anatomy and development in science among the Greeks,—anatomy

physiology. and physiology, was completely revolutionized. Through
the discovery of valves in the veins by means of
dissection and vivisection, the hypothesis of the double circulation of the
blood by Harvey (1578-1657), and the microscopic demonstrations by
Malpighi (1628-1694) of the existence of capillaries connecting the veins
and the arteries, the old theory of the motion of the blood through suction,
which had been promulgated by Galen, was completely shattered, and a
great impetus was given to investigations in anatomy and physiology. In
consequence of this scientific progress, the educational theorists began to
introduce science and a knowledge of real things into the curriculum. It
came to be widely felt that humanism gave a knowledge only of words,
books, and opinions, and did not even at its best lead to a study of real
things. Hence, new methods and new books were produced, to shorten and
improve the study of the classical languages, and new content was imported
into the courses of study. The movement also included an attempt at a
formulation of scientific principles in education and an adaptation to the
nature of the child.

Bacon and His Inductive Method.—The new tendency, however, did not
appear in education until after the time of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The
use of the scientific method by the various discoverers
Bacon rejected the
deductive method was largely unconscious, and it remained for Bacon to
of the day, formulate what he called the method of ‘induction’ and
by advocating its use, to point the way to its development
as a scientific method in education. He is, therefore, ordinarily known as the
first sense realist. He reacted from deductive logic, which was currently
supposed to be the sole method of Aristotle, and took his cue in formulating
a new method of reasoning from the many scientific workers of his time.
He made a great advance in his rejection of the contemporary method of
attempting to establish the first principles of a science, and then deducing
from them by means of the syllogism all the propositions which that science
could contain. However, his Novum Organum, or ‘new instrument’ as he
called his treatise, in endeavoring to create a method whereby anyone could
attain all the knowledge of which the human mind was capable, undertook
far too much, and resulted in a merely mechanical
but created a
mechanical procedure. Briefly stated, his plan was, after ridding the
procedure. mind of individual prejudices, to observe and carefully

tabulate lists of all the facts of nature, and from these discover the
underlying law by comparing the cases where a certain phenomenon
appears and where it does not.

But by this method neither Bacon himself nor anyone else has ever made
any real contribution to science. It does not follow that, because all
observed cases under certain conditions produce a particular effect, every
other instance not yet observed will necessarily have the
He failed to
formulate the true same effect. The true method of induction, which was
inductive method, evident even in the work of Kepler, and came to be more
so in the discoveries of Harvey and Newton, stresses
rather the part played by scientific imagination, as it is manifested by men
of genius in the forming of an hypothesis. The modern procedure is as
follows:—When certain effects are observed, of which the cause or law is
unknown, the scientist frames an hypothesis (i. e., makes a conjecture) to
account for them; then he tests this hypothesis, by collecting facts and
comparing with these facts the conclusions to which his hypothesis would
lead; and, if they correspond or agree, he holds that his hypothesis has been
confirmed or verified, and maintains that he has discovered the cause or
law. Nevertheless, while Bacon did not formulate the inductive method of
modern science, he largely helped to rid the times of an unwise dependence
upon a priori reasoning, and he did call attention to the
though he rid the
times of a priori necessity of careful observation and experimentation, and
reasoning. thus opened the way for real inductive procedure.
Probably no book ever made a greater revolution in
modes of thinking or overthrew more prejudices than Bacon’s Novum
Organum.

Bacon’s Educational Suggestions and Influence.—Bacon was not a
teacher, and his treatment of educational problems appears in brief and
scattered passages. While he offers isolated suggestions concerning the
mental and moral training of the young, he plans no serious modification in
the existing organization of schools. He does, however, in
Bacon was not
especially interested his New Atlantis imply an interest in promoting scientific
in education, research and higher education. In the ideal society
depicted in that work, he describes an organization of
scholars called ‘Salomon’s House,’ whose members in their investigations

anticipate much that scientists and inventors have to-day only just begun to
realize. Among these anticipations were the variation of species, the
infusion of serums, vivisection, telescopes, telephones, flying-machines,
submarine boats, and steam-engines. From this description Bacon would
seem to believe that education should be organized upon the basis of
society’s gradually accumulating a knowledge of nature and imparting it to
all pupils at every stage. At any rate, in his Advancement of Learning, he
definitely suggests a wider course of study, more complete equipment for
scientific investigation, a closer coöperation among institutions of learning,
and a forwarding of ‘unfinished sciences.’ And such a plan of pansophia, or
‘universal knowledge,’ was specified in the educational creed of the later
sense realists, who worked out the Baconian theory of education. Hence,
while not skilled or greatly interested in education himself, Bacon
influenced profoundly the writing of many who were, and
but his suggestions
influenced Ratich has done much to shape the spirit of modern practice. His
and Comenius. method was first applied directly to education by a
German known as Ratich, and, in a more effective way,
by Comenius, a Moravian.

Ratich’s Methods.—Ratich (1571-1635) probably became acquainted with
the sense realism of Bacon while studying in England, and, when about
forty years of age, undertook to found a system of education upon it. In
linguistic training, like all realists, he insisted that one “should first study
the vernacular” as an introduction to other languages. He
Linguistic training.
also held to the principle of “one thing at a time and often
repeated.” By this he meant that, in studying a language, one should master
a single book before taking up another. In his teaching at Köthen, as soon as
his pupils knew their letters, they were required to learn Genesis thoroughly
for the sake of their German. Each chapter was read twice by the teacher,
while the pupil followed the text with his finger. When the pupils could read
the book perfectly, they were taught grammar from it as a text. The teacher
pointed out the various parts of speech and made the boys find other
examples, and had them decline, conjugate, and parse. In taking up Latin, a
play of Terence was treated in similar fashion. Others of
Other realistic
principles. the principles that he used in teaching language and
grammar, and especially those which applied to education
in general, were even more distinctly realistic. Such, for example, were his

precepts,—“follow the order of nature” and “everything by experiment and
induction,” and his additional recommendation that “nothing is to be
learned by rote.” Thus Ratich not only helped shape some of the best
methods for teaching languages, but anticipated the main principles of
modern pedagogy. While, owing to obtrusive failings in character and
experience, he was uniformly unsuccessful in his practice, he, nevertheless,
stirred up considerable thought and stimulated many
Influence.
treatises of others. Thus, through Comenius, who carried
out his principles more fully, this German innovator, impractical as he was,
became a spiritual ancestor to Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart.

Comenius: His Training and Work.—John Amos Comenius (1592-1670)
was born at Nivnitz, Moravia, and was by religious inheritance a staunch
adherent of the Moravian Church. After a course in a Latin school, he spent
a couple of years in higher education at the Lutheran
Education,
College of Herborn and at the University of Heidelberg.
In consequence of many vicissitudes in life, he lived and
wanderings,
wrote in a number of places, and became acquainted with
the work of a variety of men engaged in educational reform and
advancement. While the problems with which they were dealing were
similar to his own and largely influenced his educational positions, he far
surpassed them all in scope of work and greatness of repute. His
educational achievements were the outgrowth of sense realism, and appear
in three directions:—(1) the series of texts for learning
and achievements.
Latin; (2) his Great Didactic; and (3) his attempts to
create an encyclopædic organization of knowledge (pansophia).

His Series of Latin Texts.—The first of the famous texts that Comenius
produced to facilitate the study of Latin was issued in 1631, and has
generally been known by the name of Janua Linguarum
The plan of the
Janua. Reserata (The Gate of Languages Unlocked). It was
intended as an introductory book to the study of Latin,
and consisted of an arrangement into sentences of several thousand Latin
words for the most familiar objects and ideas. The Latin was printed on the
right-hand side of the page, and on the left was given a translation in the
vernacular. By this means the pupil obtained a grasp of all ordinary
scientific knowledge and at the same time a start in his Latin vocabulary. In

writing this text, Comenius may have been somewhat influenced by Ratich,
a review of whose methods he had read at Herborn, but he seems to have
been more specifically indebted both for his method and the felicitous name
of his book to a Jesuit known as Bateus, who had written a similar work.

It was soon apparent that the Janua would be too difficult for beginners,
and two years later Comenius issued his Vestibulum
The Vestibulum,
(Vestibule), as an introduction to it. While the Janua
contained all the ordinary words of the language,—some eight thousand,
there were but a few hundred of the most common in the Vestibulum. Later
both of the works were several times revised, modified, and enlarged; and
grammars, lexicons, and treatises were written to accompany them. He also
published a third Latin reader, the Atrium (Entrance
Atrium,
Hall), which took the pupil one stage beyond the Janua.
We know, too, that he intended also to write a still more
Palatium,
advanced work, to be called Sapientiae Palatium (Palace
of Wisdom). This fourth book was to consist of selections from the best
Latin authors, but it was never completed. He did, however, produce as a
supplementary text-book a simpler and more extensive edition of the Janua,
accompanied with pictures. Each object in the illustrations of this book was
marked with a number corresponding to one in the text. This work, which
he called Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The World of Sense
and Orbis Pictus.
Objects Pictured), is the first illustrated reading book on
record (Fig. 21).

The Great Didactic.—But these books on teaching Latin realistically were
only part of the work that Comenius contemplated. During his whole career
he had in mind a definite idea of the aim of education, and of what, in
consequence, he wished the organization, subject-matter, and methods to
be. His ideas on the whole question of education were
Indebtedness to
others. formulated in his Great Didactic even before the Janua
appeared, but the work was not published until 1657. In it
he strove to assimilate all that was good in the realistic
His aim and
organization of movement and use it as a foundation. He developed many
education. of the principles and methods of Ratich, Bateus, and
others, but he owed a greater debt for the suggestions he
took from Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, and even more from the

Encyclopædia of Alsted, one of his teachers at Herborn. In the Great
Didactic Comenius formulated an educational aim and constructed an
educational organization of his own. Probably, as an outgrowth of his
religious attitude, he held to ‘knowledge, morality, and piety’ as the ideals
of education, and advocated universal education for ‘boys and girls, both
noble and ignoble, rich and poor.’ His organization of education consisted
of four periods of six years each. The first period of instruction was that
through infancy, or up to the age of six. It was to be given in the school of
‘the mother’s lap,’ which should exist in every house. For childhood, or
from six to twelve, was to be organized the ‘vernacular school,’ which
should appear in every hamlet and village. From that time up to eighteen
comes the ‘Latin school,’ to be maintained in every city; and, finally, for
youth from eighteen to twenty-four, there should be a university in every
kingdom or province. Such an organization would have made education
universal, and would tend to bring about the custom of education according
to ability, rather than social status, which was a suggestion some three
centuries in advance of the times.

Muntero Caps, 20. &c. Amiculum, 20. &c.
So the Furrier Sic Pellio
maketh Furred Garments facit Pellicia
of Furs. è Pellibus.

The Shoemaker. LXIII. Sutor.

The Shoemaker, 1. Sutor, 1.
maketh Slippers, 7. conficit Crepidas (Sandalia,) 7.
Shoes, 8. Calceos, 8.
(in which is seen (in quibus spectatur
above, the Upper-leather, superne Obstragulum,
beneath the Sole, inferne Solea,
and on both sides et utrinque
the Latchets) Ansæ)
Boots, 9. Ocreas, 9.
and High Shoes, 10. et Perones, 10.
of Leather, 5. e Corio, 5.
(which is cut with a (quod discinditur
Cutting-knife), 6. Scalpro Sutorio, 6.)
by means of an Awl, 2. ope Subulæ, 2.
and Lingel, 3. et Fili picati, 3.
upon a Last, 4. super Modum, 4.

Fig. 21.—A page from the Orbis Pictus of Comenius, illustrating a lesson
on a trade.

(Reproduced from the edition published by C. W. Bardeen, 1887.)

His Encyclopædic Arrangement of Knowledge.—The rest of the works
of Comenius may be regarded as amplifications of various parts of this
Great Didactic. Besides the Janual series, which he seems to have written
for the Latin school, he produced a set of texts for the vernacular school,
which soon disappeared, and a handbook for the lowest work, called The
School of Infancy. But the phase of the Great Didactic
Pansophic training
at every stage of most often elaborated was the realistic one of pansophia
education. or ‘universal knowledge.’ This principle was not only
exemplified in such works as the Janua and Orbis Pictus
and in treatises he wrote upon astronomy and physics, but in various
educational institutions that he undertook to found, and it remained the
ruling passion throughout his life. In the Great Didactic he went so far as to
hold that an encyclopædic training should be given at every stage of
education,—mother school, vernacular school, Latin school, and university.

But, while even in the mother school the infant was to make a beginning
with geography, history, and various sciences, grammar, rhetoric, and
dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, and the rudiments of
economics, politics, ethics, metaphysics, and religion, his attainment was
not expected to be as formidable as the names of the subjects sound. It was
to consist merely in understanding simple causal,
Each succeeding
stage to enlarge the temporal, spatial, and numerical relations; in
body of knowledge. distinguishing sun, moon, and stars, hills, valleys, lakes,
and rivers, and animals and plants; in learning to express
oneself; and in acquiring proper habits. It was, in fact, not unlike the
training of the modern kindergarten. In a similar way each succeeding stage
is to enlarge the body of knowledge along all these lines. “The different
schools are not to deal with different subjects, but should treat the same
subjects in different ways; throughout graduating the instruction to the age
of the pupil and the knowledge that he already possesses. In the earlier
schools everything is taught in a general and undefined manner, while in
those which follow the information is particularized and exact.” Moreover,
beyond the university, which, like the lower schools, was to make teaching
its chief function, Comenius held it to be important that somewhere in the

world there should be a ‘didactic college’ devoted to
The ‘didactic
college’ for all scientific investigation, in which learned men from all
nations. nations should coöperate. Such an institution would form
a logical climax to his system of schools, bearing the
same relation to them that the stomach does to the other members of the
body by “supplying blood, life, and strength to all.”

The Method of Nature.—The way in which this pansophic instruction
should be given, Comenius also intended to have in full accord with sense
realism. He insists that the ‘method of nature’ must be observed and
followed, and then shows how nature accomplishes all things ‘with
certainty, ease, and thoroughness,’ in what respects schools have deviated
from the principles of nature, and how they can be rectified only by
following her plans. These principles concerning the working of nature
were laid down a priori, but it is probable that they had been previously
worked out inductively from his schoolroom experience. At times, though,
they were put in the form of fanciful analogies. For
Often fanciful
analogies, example, he declares that because a bird by nature
hatches her young in the spring or early part of the year,
schools have erred (1) in not requiring education to begin in the springtime
of life, or boyhood, and (2) in not selecting the springtime of the day, or the
morning hours, for study.

But it is not remarkable that, with all his realistic tendencies, Comenius did
not consistently employ induction. The natural sciences were young in his
day, so that he did not altogether grasp their content and method, and he had
partially inherited the scholastic notion that truth cannot be fully secured
through the senses or by reason. It is sufficient merit that Comenius, for the
first time in history, applied anything like induction to
but more fully
inductive teaching. Moreover, in the application of his general
elsewhere. method to the specific teaching of various lines,—
sciences, reading, writing, singing, languages, morality,
and piety, he utilized more fully the induction of Bacon. For example, after
showing the necessity for careful observation in obtaining a knowledge of
the sciences, he gives nine useful precepts for their study that are clearly the
inductive result of his own experience as a teacher. Likewise, he insists that,
in teaching the sciences, in order to make a genuine impression upon the

mind, one must deal with realities rather than books. The objects
themselves, or where this is not possible, such representations of them as
can be conveyed by copies, models, and pictures, must be studied. After the
same principle he formulates inductive rules and methods for instruction in
the other subjects.

The Influence of Comenius upon Education.—Thus the work of
Comenius was based primarily upon sense realism, but he added many
modifications and new elements of his own. He may in the fullest sense be
considered the great educational theorist and practical reformer of the
seventeenth century. His practical ability is especially
Popularity of his
Latin text-books, shown in the series of Latin text-books, which far
excelled the works of several contemporaries on similar
lines. The Janua was translated into a dozen European, and at least three
Asiatic languages; the Orbis Pictus proved even more popular, and went
through an almost unlimited number of editions in various tongues; and the
whole series became for many generations the favorite means of
introducing young people to the study of Latin. But the remarkable
theoretical work of Comenius had little effect upon the schools of the
period, and until about the middle of the nineteenth
but ignorance of the
Great Didactic, century the Great Didactic was scarcely known. At that
time, when this treatise of Comenius was brought to light
by German investigators, it was discovered that the old realist of the
seventeenth century had been the first to deal with education in a scientific
spirit, and work out its problems practically in the schools. And the
principles of Comenius were at the time unconsciously taken up by others
and indirectly became the basis of modern education. His
which was the
indirect basis of spirit appeared not only in the ideas of subsequent
modern education. theorists—Francke, Rousseau, Basedow, Pestalozzi,
Herbart, Froebel—but even in the actual curricula and
methods of educational institutions.

Realistic Tendencies in Elementary Schools.—While the effect of sense
realism upon the schools seems to have been slow and indirect, the
movement was obvious even in the seventeenth century. In Germany there
came a decided tendency throughout the elementary schools to increase
instruction in the vernacular, as recommended by Ratich and Comenius, and

to learn first the German grammar rather than the Latin.
Slow and indirect,
but the vernacularWith this movement was joined the increase in universal
and elementary and compulsory education urged by the reformers, and an
science introduced.
introduction of elementary science, in addition to reading,
writing, arithmetic, religion, and singing. At Weimar in
1619, through a pupil of Ratich, a new school system was organized; and in
1642, under the order of Duke Ernst, Andreas Reyher prepared a new
course for Gotha, which afforded elementary instruction in the natural
sciences, as well as the rudiments and religion. This work included teaching
the children to measure with the hour-glass and sun-dial, to observe the
ordinary plants and animals, and to carry on other objective studies of a
simple character. Many other attempts at instruction in science were made
elsewhere in the German states, both in private and public education, and
the same tendency appeared in the states of Italy, and in France, Holland,
and England.

Secondary Schools.—But the new realistic tendencies appeared also in
secondary education. While in Germany it was not until the eighteenth
century that there were any evidences of sense realism in the gymnasia,
languages of neighboring countries and considerable
Science in the
Ritterakademien, science appeared in the Ritterakademien (see p. 157) by
the middle of the seventeenth, and toward the end of the
century in the schools of Francke and other ‘pietists’ at Halle were
embodied all the realistic elements of Comenius. While the pietists adopted
these ideas largely for their religious side, as a protest and reaction to the
rationalistic Ritterakademien, they did not hesitate also to stress the science
content and the study of the vernacular. In the secondary school known as
the Pädagogium, which he had started for well-to-do
Pädagogium,
boys, Francke included training in the vernacular,
mathematics, geography, natural science, astronomy, anatomy, and materia
medica; and the Realschule, established by his colleague,
and Realschule,
Semler, went even more fully into the vernacular,
mathematics, and the sciences, pure and applied. This realistic instruction of
the pietists was brought by Hecker to Berlin, where he started his famous
Realschule in 1747, and similar institutions soon spread
and in grammar
schools and throughout Prussia. In England, while very few of the
academies. grammar and public schools (see p. 120) as yet

introduced even the elements of science into their course, the academies
(see p. 157) were rich in sciences, mathematics, and the vernacular. This
was also true of the academies that sprang up in America (see p. 158).

The Universities.—The universities were slower in responding to the
movement of sense realism. As the result of its pietistic origin, however, the
University of Halle was realistic almost from its
Sciences in Halle,
Göttingen, and beginning in 1692. Göttingen, the next institution to
other universities, become hospitable to the tendency, did not start it until
1737. But soon afterward the movement became general,
and by the end of the eighteenth century all the German universities—at
least, all under Protestant auspices—had created professorships in the
sciences. While the English universities, Oxford and
and in Oxford and
Cambridge. Cambridge, were much slower than those of Germany in
adopting the new subjects, and it was a century and a half
before these institutions became known for their science, during the
professorship of Isaac Newton (1669-1702) considerable was done toward
making Cambridge mathematical and scientific, and in the course of the
eighteenth century several chairs in the sciences were established. Besides
formulating the law of gravitation, Newton lectured and
Great work of
Newton. wrote at Cambridge upon calculus, astronomy, optics,
and the spectrum. He became one of the greatest
mathematicians and physicists the world has known, and he did much to
create a scientific atmosphere in other educational institutions, as well as
Cambridge. America also felt the scientific impulse in its higher
institutions. Some study of astronomy, botany, and
Science in
American colleges. physics was possible at Harvard even in the seventeenth
century, and during the eighteenth Yale, Princeton, King’s
(afterward Columbia), Dartmouth, Union, and Pennsylvania all came to
offer a little work in physics, and at times in chemistry, geology, astronomy,
and biology. In his proposals for the prospective ‘seminary’ in New York
(1753), which was destined to become Columbia University, and in the
actual course of the academy at Philadelphia (later the University of
Pennsylvania), over which he presided, Dr. William Smith put a most
progressive program of sciences, including the rudiments of mechanics,
physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, botany, zoölogy, and physiology.

But for half a century after this American institutions did little with the
sciences as laboratory studies.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. XVIII; and Great
Educators of Three Centuries (Macmillan, 1912), chaps. II, IV, and VI;
Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 461-501. The following works
are standard for the authors mentioned: Adamson, J. W., Pioneers of
Modern Education (Macmillan, 1905), chap. III (Bacon); Barnard, H.,
German Teachers and Educators, pp. 343-370 (Ratich); Fowler, T., Bacon’s
Novum Organum (Oxford, Clarendon Press); Laurie, S. S., John Amos
Comenius (Bardeen, Syracuse, 1892); Monroe, W. S., Comenius (Scribner,
1900); and Quick, R. H., Educational Reformers (Appleton, 1896), chap. IX
(Ratich) and X (Comenius). An account of sense realism is afforded by
Adamson, op. cit., chap. I, and of its effect upon the schools by Barnard, op.
cit., pp. 302-317, and by Paulsen, F., German Education (Scribner, 1908),
pp. 117-133.

CHAPTER XVI

FORMAL DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Locke is often classed with the advocates of realism or of naturalism,
but the keynote to his thought is ‘discipline.’ This is to be obtained in
intellectual training through mathematics; in moral training, through
the control of desires by reason; and in physical training, through a
‘hardening process.’

Locke has, therefore, often been viewed as the great advocate of the
theory of formal discipline, according to which certain subjects yield a
general power that may be applied in any direction, and should be
studied by all.

This doctrine has greatly influenced education, but in the late
nineteenth century there was a decided reaction from it. Recently this
extreme reaction has been modified, and a position taken with which
Locke’s real attitude would seem to be in harmony.

Locke’s Work and Its Various Classifications.—Because of their relation
to an important topic in modern education, the theories of John Locke
(1632-1704) should receive further attention than they have yet been given.
No writer on education has been more variously
Often classed as an
early realist, a sense classified than he. We have already seen (p. 154) that the
realist, or a general tenor of his Thoughts concerning Education
naturalist. would lead us to group him with the early realistic
movement. There are also elements in this work that
would seem to place him with the sense realists, and many of his ideas
proved so similar and suggestive to Rousseau’s thought (see p. 213), that he
has sometimes been classed among the advocates of naturalism. But
Locke’s Thoughts, by which his educational position is often exclusively

judged, were simply a set of practical suggestions for the education of a
gentleman, written for a friend as advice in bringing up his son. They make
clear his general sympathy with the current educational reform, but do not
bring out his main point of view. His central thought appears more
definitely through the philosophical principles in his famous Essay
concerning the Human Understanding, and through the intellectual training
suggested in his other educational work, Conduct of the Understanding,
which was originally an additional book and application of the Essay.

Locke’s Disciplinary Theory in Intellectual Education.—Probably
Locke’s underlying thought as to the proper method of intellectual, moral,
and physical training may best be summed up in the word
But his underlying
thought is ‘discipline.’ This educational attitude is a natural
‘discipline’. corollary of his philosophic position. In his Essay he
holds that ideas are not born in one, but that all
knowledge comes from experience. The mind, he declares, is like ‘white
paper, or wax,’ upon which impressions from the outside world are made
through our senses. When the ideas are once in mind, it is necessary to
determine what they tell us in the way of truth. Hence, to train the mind to
make proper discriminations, he declares in the Conduct of the
Understanding that practice and discipline are necessary.
To train the mind,
mathematics and a “Would you have a man reason well, you must use him to
range of sciences it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connection
should be studied. of ideas and following them in train.” As to the means of
effecting this mental discipline, Locke holds: “Nothing
does this better than mathematics, which therefore I think should be taught
all those who have the time and opportunity, not so much to make them
mathematicians as to make them reasonable creatures, that having got the
way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they
might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge as they shall have
occasion.” Similarly, he advises a wide range of sciences, “to accustom our
minds to all sorts of ideas and the proper ways of examining their habitudes
and relations; not to make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to
open and dispose their minds as may best make them capable of any, when
they shall apply themselves to it.”

Disciplinary Attitude in Moral and Physical Training.—The same
disciplinary conception of education underlies Locke’s
For moral training,
the desires should ideals of moral training: “That a man is able to deny
be guided by himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and
reason. purely follow what reason directs as best, tho’ the
appetite lean the other way. This power is to be got and
improved by custom, made easy and familiar by an early practice.” And
even more definitely disciplinary is the well-known ‘hardening process,’
which he recommends in physical training: “The first
For physical
training, the thing to be taken care of is that children be not too
‘hardening process’ warmly clad or covered, winter or summer. The face,
should be used. when we are born, is no less tender than any other part of
the body. It is use alone hardens it, and makes it more
able to endure the cold.” He likewise advises that a boy’s “feet be washed
every day in cold water,” that he “have his shoes so thin that they might
leak and let in water,” that he “play in the wind and sun without a hat,” and
that “his bed be hard.”

Origin, Significance, and Influence of the Theory of Formal Discipline.
—This emphasis upon discipline in training of every sort—intellectual,
moral, physical—has often caused Locke to be regarded as the first great
exponent of the educational doctrine of ‘formal discipline.’ That theory has
been so widespread and important during the past two centuries as to
require consideration here. During the Middle Ages and the early period of
humanism Latin was not only of cultural, but of practical utilitarian value. It
was the language of the Church and of diplomacy, and in
Evolved through
the disappearance it was locked up all the learning of the times. All
of the utilitarian guidance in science, literature, philosophy, and politics
argument. that received any consideration was couched in its terms.
But with the decline of ecclesiastical influence, the
development of vernacular languages, and the scientific awakening in the
seventeenth century (see pp. 163 f.), this utilitarian argument for the study
of Latin was largely swept away. Appeal was then made in behalf of the
subject to the doctrine of ‘formal discipline,’ which was supported by the
‘faculty’ psychology of Aristotle. It was held that the
A general power
afforded. study of Latin yields results out of all proportion to the
effort expended, and gives a general power that may be

applied in any direction. A similar claim was before long made for Greek
and mathematics. Mathematics was declared to sharpen the ‘faculty of
reason,’ while the classic languages were believed to improve the ‘faculty
of memory.’ Consequently, it gradually came to be argued by formal
disciplinarians that every one should take these all-
Every one should
take certain studies, important studies, regardless of his interest, ability, or
regardless of purpose in life, since he would thus best prepare himself
interest. for any field of labor. All who proved unfitted for these
particular subjects have, therefore, been supposed to be
not qualified for the higher duties and responsibilities, and to be unworthy
of consideration in higher education.

This doctrine of formal discipline has had a tremendous effect upon each
stage of education in practically every country and during every period until
recently. Even the scientists and advocates of a variety of
Used by scientists.
other subjects, instead of arguing for content value and
particular training, have made strenuous efforts to meet this argument by
pointing out the formal discipline in their own studies (see pp. 404 f.).
Excellent examples of the effect of this theory upon
Effect upon
institutions of educational institutions are found in the formal classicism
various countries. of the English grammar and public schools and
universities and of the German gymnasiums. While in the
United States a newer and more flexible society has enabled changes to be
more readily made, as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century,
Greek, Latin, and mathematics largely made up the staples in many high
schools, colleges, and universities, and the husks of formal grammar were
often defended in elementary education upon the score of formal discipline.

Opposition to the Disciplinary Theory and More Recent Modification.
—At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, with the
abandonment of the ‘faculty psychology’ and the development of
educational theory, a decided reaction from the doctrines of formal
discipline began among psychologists and common sense educators. It is
now almost universally conceded that specific, rather
Specific, not
general, power. than general, power is developed by the various studies,
and no student is held to be unworthy of education or
impervious to culture, simply because he is not adapted to the classics or

mathematics. In consequence, the content of studies,
Content, rather than
form, stressed. rather than the process of acquisition, has come to be
emphasized, the curriculum has everywhere been
broadened, and the principle of the election of subjects largely recognized.
It has, however, been felt within the last half dozen years that in reacting
from the old theory of formal discipline, educators went too far. While it is
still held that emphasis must be laid upon the specific character of mental
training, there are some generalized powers and values to
But some
generalized powers be obtained. It is realized that “a general benefit can be
possible. derived from specific training in so far as the person
trained has consciously wrought out in connection with
the specific training a general concept of method, based upon the specific
methods used in that training” (F. A. Hodge). Thus a student who has once
realized the value of close reasoning through mathematical demonstrations
is likely to develop a general concept of method, and can hardly be satisfied
any longer with slovenly thinking in other fields; and the fine
discriminations discovered in the classical authors, the balanced judgment
used in historical method, and the accuracy required in the study of the
sciences, may well be abstracted and tend to furnish a generalized ideal for
other lines of endeavor.

Locke’s Real Position on Formal Discipline.—It would
And Locke’s
‘discipline’ is of seem as if this modified form of general power were all
this kind. that Locke had in mind. He definitely concedes that
“learning pages of Latin by heart, no more fits the
memory for retention of anything else, than the graving of one sentence in
lead makes it the more capable of retaining firmly any other characters.”
And while he holds that the method of reasoning in mathematics can be
transferred ‘to other parts of knowledge,’ he declares that men who are
reasonable in some things are often very unreasonable in others, and “men
who may reason well in one sort of matters to-day may not do so at all a
year hence.” The generalized benefits that students may
Generalized values
of mathematics. obtain from mathematics are simply that it “would show
them the necessity there is, in reasoning, to separate all
distinct ideas, and see the habitudes that all those concerned in the present
inquiry have to one another, and to lay by those which relate not to the
proposition in hand and wholly to leave them out of the reckoning. This is

that which in other subjects is absolutely requisite to just reasoning.” Thus
Locke appears to be rather in harmony with modern educational theory than
a thorough-going advocate of formal discipline. At any
Locke did not
defend the rate, it should be recognized that he did not defend, but
formalism of public vigorously assailed, the grammatical and linguistic grind
schools. in the English public schools. His attitude toward formal
discipline seems to have sprung from his desire to root
out the traditional and false, rather than to support the narrow humanistic
curricula of the times.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), pp. 305-311; and Great
Educators (Macmillan, 1912), chap. VI; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan,
1905), chap. IX. For a more extended account of Locke, read his Thoughts
and Conduct, and Fowler, T., John Locke (Macmillan, 1901). The literature
of formal discipline is most extensive and the subject is still under
discussion; but a good summary of all written up to 1911 is furnished in
Heck, W. H., Mental Discipline and Educational Values (John Lane, New
York), and later articles can be found by consulting the index of The
American Psychological Review. In a doctoral dissertation (University of
Virginia), John Locke and Formal Discipline, Hodge, F. A., makes it clear
that the common interpretation of Locke as a formal disciplinarian is unfair.
The most typical of the earliest opposition to the disciplinary argument is
probably found in Thorndike, E. L., Educational Psychology (Teachers
College, New York, 1910), chap. VIII; the sanest discussion of the possible
transfer of ideals appears in Bagley, W. C., Educative Process (Macmillan,
1905), chap. XIII; and the reaction to the reaction is best portrayed by
Angell, Pillsbury, and Judd in Educational Review, vol. XXXVI, pp. 1-43.
Lyans, C. K., in his article upon Formal Discipline (Pedagogical Seminary,
vol. XXI, pp. 343-393) makes a most careful analysis of the interpretations
of the defenders and opponents of the theory, and gives a very thorough
discussion of transfers.

CHAPTER XVII

EDUCATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

OUTLINE

The schools of the American colonies closely resembled those of the
European countries from which the colonists came, and were
influenced by the various religious conceptions of education that were
current in each case. In general, where the Calvinistic attitude
prevailed, the colonies attempted universal education, but where the
Anglican communion dominated, the aristocratic ideal of education
was in evidence.

Three types of colonial school organization appeared: (1) laissez faire
in Virginia; (2) ‘parochial’ in New Netherlands; and (3) governmental
activity in Massachusetts. The South generally followed the same plan
as Virginia, and New York (after the English occupation) and Rhode
Island also developed on this basis. The other Middle and New
England colonies followed the parochial and governmental patterns
respectively.

American Education a Development from European.—We have hitherto
had little occasion to speak of American education, except by way of
anticipating certain great waves of influence and important institutions that
have come into America from Europe. But we have now reached the period
when the New World began to be extensively colonized, and in the rest of
our study educational practices in America will become increasingly
distinctive and influential. The schools of America are the offspring of
European institutions, and have their roots deep in the social soil of the
lands from which the colonists came. While the universal, free, and secular
schools of the United States are a natural accompaniment of its republican
form of government, like the new democracy itself, this development of
popular education was not reached at a bound. At first the American schools

resembled the institutions of the Mother Country as
The seventeenth
closely as the frontier life would permit. The seventeenth
century a period of
century was, therefore, for American education distinctly
‘transplantation of
schools.’ a period of ‘transplantation of schools,’ with little or no
conscious change; and it is only toward the middle of the
next century, as new social and political conditions were evolving and the
days of the Revolution were approaching, that there are evident the gradual
modification of European ideals and the differentiation of American schools
toward an ideal of their own.

Conditions in Europe from Which American Education Sprang.—
Hence, in order to understand American education in the colonial period,
we must briefly consider the social and educational conditions in Europe
during the early part of the seventeenth century, when the
Influence of
Reformation period colonists began their migrations. The thirteen American
upon the colonists. colonies were started while the fierce agitations of the
Reformation period were still at their height. The settlers,
for the most part, were Protestants, and many of them had emigrated in
order to establish institutions—political, ecclesiastical, educational—that
would conform to their own ideals, and in all cases education in the New
World was given a peculiar importance by the dominant religious interests
and conflicts of the old. At this time in practically all the states of Europe,
educational institutions were controlled and supported by the Church and
religious orders, with the assistance of private benevolence; but a few
schools everywhere, and especially in Teutonic countries, were maintained
by pre-Reformation craft gilds, and so had a close connection with
municipalities (see p. 92). Thus the American schools at first naturally
adopted the religious conception of education and religious domination, but
had some acquaintance with free schools and municipal management.

In addition to these characteristics, the religious reformers, like Luther and
Calvin, generally held to the idea that a system of schools
Tendency toward
universal education should be supported, or at least established, by the state,
among Calvinists, and that all children should have an opportunity to secure
but aristocratic an education sufficient to make them familiar with the
ideals among
Anglicans. Scriptures. If people were to be guided by the word of
God, they must all be able to read it. But this view of

education was not held by those for whom, as in the English Church, the
Reformation was not primarily a religious and theological, but rather an
ecclesiastical and political revolt. In Holland and Scotland, for example,
where Calvinism prevailed, universal education was upheld by the mass of
the people, but in France and England only a small minority, the Huguenots
and Puritans respectively, adopted this attitude. Hence it happens that,
wherever in America the influence of Puritanism, the Dutch Reformed
religion, Scotch Presbyterianism, or other forms of Calvinism was felt, the
nucleus of public education appeared, while in the colonies where the
Anglican communion was dominant, the aristocratic idea of education
prevailed and training of the masses was neglected. However, even among
the Calvinists, who held that elementary education should be universal, and
that the State as well as the Church should hold itself responsible for its
being furnished, the logical solution of the problem was not perceived for
scores of years. In the Calvinistic colonies it was not at first believed that
education should be the same in character for all or that the State should
bear the expense through taxation. This distinctively American
interpretation of public education did develop later, but in the beginning
even the most advanced colonies to some extent placed the financial
responsibility upon the parent or guardian.

Colonial School Organization: The Aristocratic Type in Virginia.—As a
result of these general traditions and characteristics, there would seem to
have been three chief types of school organization in the colonies. These
were (1) the laissez faire method, current in Virginia and
Three chief types.
the South; (2) the parochial organization of New
Netherlands and the Middle Colonies in general; (3) the governmental
activity in Massachusetts and most of the other New England colonies. We
may profitably discuss these typical organizations in order. Turning first to
the aristocratic colonies of the South, we may select
In Virginia,
selective education, Virginia, the oldest of these provinces, as representative
inherited from of the type. That colony constituted the first attempt of
England. England at reproducing herself in the New World, and
here are found an order of society, form of government,
established church, and distinction between classes, similar to those of the
Mother Country. For some time there existed a sharp line of demarcation
between the gentry, or landowning class, and the masses, which included

the landless, indentured servants, and other dependents. In education, the
colonists had brought with them the idea of a classical higher and secondary
training for the upper classes in the semi-monastic type of university and
the (Latin) grammar school (see pp. 120 f.), and but little in the way of
elementary education, except private ‘dame’ schools and the catechetical
training by the clergy. There were, in addition, the family ‘tutorial’
education, both secondary and elementary, for the children of the wealthy,
and evident attempts at perpetuating the old English industrial training
through apprenticeship for orphans and children of the poor. But no such
institution as a public elementary school was at first
Consequent
educational known. In consequence, the educational legislation in
legislation. colonial Virginia is concerned mainly with (a) the
organization of a college or university, (b) individual
schools of secondary grade, and (c) apprenticeship education for the poor.

During the first quarter of a century most educational
Efforts to found a
college efforts in Virginia were in behalf of the foundation of an
institution of higher learning, and were aided by the king,
the Anglican bishops, and the London Company. By 1619 over £2000 and a
grant of ten thousand acres of land had been obtained for a University at
Henrico, but this rather indefinite plan was brought to a violent end by the
Indian massacre of 1622, and the funds were diverted to a school in the
Bahamas. An even more fruitless endeavor to found a college was made in
1624 by Sir Edwin Palmer upon an island in the Susquehanna. During this
period also there was at least one abortive attempt to establish a school by
collections and gifts, and during the second quarter century of the colony
there were chartered a number of secondary schools,
and secondary
schools. endowed with bequests of land, money, cows, horses,
slaves, or other property. These schools, however, were
local, and resembled the endowed Latin schools of England, except that
they may sometimes have been obliged by circumstances to include more or
less elementary instruction. In 1660 there was also a renewed attempt to
establish by subscriptions a college and “free (secondary) school for the
advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry and
promotion of piety.” But none of the efforts at founding schools could have
been very successful, for, a decade later, when interrogated as to what kind
of education existed in the colonies, Governor Berkeley made his famous

reply: “The same course that is taken in England out of towns; every man
according to his ability instructing his children.... I thank God there are no
free schools, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world.”

However, despite these biased remarks of the testy governor, by 1692 the
constant efforts to obtain an institution of learning were finally rewarded.
Through the management of the Reverend James Blair, D. D., the bishop’s
commissary in Virginia, a charter for the College of William and Mary, a
gift of £2000 and of twenty thousand acres of land, and the right to certain
colonial taxes were obtained from the king, and large donations were made
by the planters and additional support provided by the assembly. In fact, the
college was munificently endowed for the times, and it did a great work in
training the greatest scholars, statesmen, judges, military officers, and other
leaders during the struggle for independence. Moreover, ‘free’ schools now
greatly increased in number and their courses were much
Apprenticeship
education for the improved. But education was throughout this early period
poor. regarded as a special privilege, and the masses were
mostly employed in making tobacco, and other manual
pursuits. For the sons of these people the only educational legislation was
that provided between 1643 and 1748 in various acts concerning the
industrial training of the poor, apprentices, wards, and orphans. In keeping
with English precedents, these children were taught a trade by the masters
to whom they were indentured, or trained in the flax-house established by
public funds at James City. Thus, by the middle of the eighteenth century a
fair provision of secondary and higher education had been voluntarily made
in various localities, but as yet no real interest in common schools had been
shown by the responsible classes in Virginia. Education was there
predominantly ‘selective’ in character.

The Parochial Schools in New Netherlands.—A second type of colonial
organization of education appears in the New Netherlands, as the country
between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers was called during the period
of Dutch control (1621-1674). In contrast to the laissez faire attitude of
Virginia, the foundation of schools was parochial. Instead of the chance
endowment of schools wherever the benefactors happened to be located, a
school was founded in connection with every church. This arrangement

grew out of the Calvinistic conception of universal
Calvinistic
conception of education, which formed an essential part of the social
universal education,traditions in Holland during the seventeenth century.
as in Holland. Long before the Dutch came to America, the parochial
school, as a means of preserving the Reformed faith, had
become an indispensable part of church organization. But the Dutch state
also had concerned itself with the facilities for education. The Reformed
Dutch Church was granted the right to examine teachers, enforce
subscription to the creed, and, in the case of the elementary schools at least,
largely determine the appointments, but the legal support and control of
education were vested in the civil authorities. Hence there early arose in
New Amsterdam and the villages of New Netherlands a parochial school
system and a distribution of control between Church and State very similar
to that in Holland. Besides the ordinary elementary
Catechism and
prayers of branches, these parochial schools of the New Netherlands
Reformed Church, taught the ‘true principles of Christian religion,’ and the
as well as catechism and prayers of the Reformed Church. Thus the
elementary
branches, taught. Dutch school differed from those in the Anglican colonies
of the South, which stressed secondary education, in
being chiefly elementary, although some attempt at conducting a Latin or
‘grammar’ (see p. 120) school was also made in New Amsterdam from
1652 on. However, after the English took permanent possession of New
York (1674), the parochial school of the city was limited to the support of
the Reformed Church, and, as a result of its long refusal to adopt the
English language, its possible influence toward the realization of universal
education was completely lost. While the Dutch schools
But, with English
occupation, of the villages generally retained the joint control and
replaced by laissez support of the local court and church, with a constantly
faire organization. increasing domination of the former, as a whole the
English occupation of New York would seem to have set
public education back about a hundred years. At any rate, by the eighteenth
century colonial New York seems to have fallen into the same laissez faire
support of education that prevailed in the Southern colonies. The policy of
universal education by means of parochial schools no longer existed.

Sectarian Organization of Schools in Pennsylvania.—As a colony,
Pennsylvania developed a church school organization, similar to that of the

New Netherlands, except that it was carried on in connection with a number
of creeds, and that the municipality was seldom a
More sects and the
municipality not coördinate factor. Pennsylvania was more heterogeneous
coördinated. in population than New York, as the tolerant attitude of
the Quaker government had attracted a large variety of
German sects, Swedes, Dutch, English, Welsh, and Scotch and Irish
Presbyterians, and each was devoted to its own denominational schools.
Early in the eighteenth century all Protestant religious bodies were
authorized by statute to conduct schools and to receive bequests and hold
land for their support. Even before this the Friends had
Friends,
started the ‘Penn Charter School,’ which, while itself a
secondary school, soon established elementary schools as branches
throughout the city upon various arrangements. In keeping with the
conclusions of various ‘Yearly Meetings’ (1722, 1746, etc.), the Friends
also provided elementary, and to some extent secondary, schools in close
proximity to all meeting-houses throughout the colony.
Lutherans,
Similarly, the Lutheran congregations, for example, each
set up a school alongside of the church as early as possible. Likewise the
Mennonites included in their system the famous schools
Mennonites,
of Christopher Dock, who in 1750 produced the first
elaborate educational treatise in America. There was also some attempt at
‘grammar’ schools (see p. 120) or secondary education,
and others.
especially in the case of the well-known Moravian
institutions at Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Lititz, and the Presbyterian Log
College at Neshaminy, which became the cradle of Princeton, Washington
and Jefferson, Hampden-Sidney, and Union Colleges.

A somewhat broader spirit was manifest in the voluntary ‘neighborhood’
schools of Western Pennsylvania and elsewhere, in the
Broader attempts.
attempts at universal education of the Connecticut
colonists in the Wyoming Valley, and in the ‘academy’ (see p. 159) set up at
Philadelphia through Franklin, to train public men and teachers, and fuse
the various nations in a common citizenship. But, as a whole, parochial
schools exerted the greatest influence in the colony of Pennsylvania.

Town Schools in Massachusetts.—The third type of colonial school
organization appeared first in Massachusetts. As compared with the laissez

faire and the parochial methods, governmental activity here prevailed.
Accordingly, Massachusetts may be said to have inaugurated the first real
system of public education in America. The character of the schools in this
colony developed from its peculiar form of society and government. It was
democratic, concentrated, and homogeneous, as
Democratic and
homogeneous compared with the cosmopolitan and sectarian social
society produced structure in the Middle colonies, or the class distinctions
governmental and scattered population of the South. While there were
activity.
some servants and dependents in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony and a distinction was made between ‘freemen’ and others, there
were at no time rival elements that were unable to combine. The settlements
were not a mere confederation, but the blending of all elements into a single
organism, where the individuality of each was merged in a new social
whole. This condition was a result of the radical ingrained religious
conviction that every one was a child of God, capable of becoming a vital
and useful member of society, and that the community was obligated to give
him training to that end in the home, the church, and the school.

Out of this Calvinistic attitude sprang a spirit of coöperation and
helpfulness, a general participation of all townsmen in local government,
and the Massachusetts type of school organization. Common schools seem
to have been supported in most towns from the first by voluntary or
compulsory subscriptions, and before the close of the first quarter of a
century there had been established by the colony at large an educational
system in which every citizen had a working share. Because of this
inclusiveness and unity in matters theological, the schools, while religious
and moral, could hardly be considered sectarian. The first educational act of
the colony, passed in 1642, was similar to the old English
Acts of 1642
apprenticeship law in its provision for industrial
education, and, while it was broadened so as to include some literary
elements and a rate to procure materials was established,
and 1647.
no school is mentioned in it. But in 1647 each town of
fifty families was required, under a penalty of £5, to maintain an elementary
school (Fig. 22), and every one of a hundred families a (Latin) ‘grammar’
(Fig. 23) school. These schools might be supported in part by tuition fees,
as well as by the town rate, and the obligation seems to have still rested on
the parents to see that the children did ‘resort’ to the school, but the germs

of the present common school system in the United States appear in the
educational activity of the legislature in colonial Massachusetts. The
‘grammar’ schools were to prepare boys for Harvard College (Fig. 24),
which had been founded in 1636.

Education in the Other Colonies.—In general, the organization of
education in the remaining nine colonies can be classed under one of the
three types, described above, but there are various modifications and some
exceptions to be noted. The laissez faire foundation of schools and colleges
during the colonial period, which was evident in Virginia, seems to be
characteristic of the four other colonies of the South. But the problems were
in every case a little different, and in each there were
County schools in
Maryland. variations in development. Maryland, for example, while
mainly following the same random foundation of schools
as Virginia, also seriously endeavored (1696) to support schools in every
county by a general colonial tax. South Carolina likewise
Parish schools in
South Carolina. made an unsuccessful attempt (1722) at establishing a
county system of schools, and, a decade before, it
undertook to subsidize a school in each parish. Georgia,
Georgia financed
by parliament. on the other hand, until the Revolution, had its entire
budget, including the items for education, financed by the
English parliament. And North Carolina, through a large
Democratic
tendencies in North number of Irish and Scotch Presbyterians, German
Carolina. Protestants, and other immigrants, mostly from
Pennsylvania, after 1728 began to break away from the
aristocratic policy.

Moreover, after the permanent occupation (1674) by the English, New York
went over to the laissez faire plan (see p. 194). And, although in the
remaining ‘middle’ colonies, New Jersey and Delaware, something was
accomplished by the parochial schools of the various
Random
organization in sects, much of the school organization there was laissez
New York and faire. Likewise, Rhode Island, dominated by a fanatical
Rhode Island. devotion to freedom in thought and speech, failed
throughout colonial days to pass any general regulations
on education, like those of Massachusetts, and followed more closely the
random organization of schools in Virginia. But the other New England

colonies, Connecticut and New Hampshire, when it separated from
Massachusetts, tended to provide schools after the
Governmental
activity in New Massachusetts plan. The Hartford colony of Connecticut
England. in its statutes of 1650 copied almost verbatim the
phraseology used by Massachusetts in the establishment
of schools. It remains for later chapters to show how the practices suggested
by this type of organization have eventually overcome those of the other
two, for that did not come to pass until after the colonial period.

Fig. 22.—Town school at Dedham (Massachusetts) with
watch-tower, built in 1648.

Fig. 23.—Boston Latin School, founded in 1635.

Fig. 24.—The buildings of Harvard College (founded 1636) erected in
1675, 1699, and 1720.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, History of Education in Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), chap, iv;
Clews, Elsie W., affords primary source material in Educational Legislation
and Administration of the Colonial Governments (Columbia University,
Department of Philosophy and Psychology, No. 6). The interpretation of
educational organization in Colonial Schools used in this chapter is
furnished by Monroe and Kilpatrick in the Monroe Cyclopædia of
Education (Macmillan, 1910-14). For conditions in the various colonies,
consult Dexter, E. G., History of Education in the United States
(Macmillan, 1904), chaps. I-VI; Jackson, G. L., The Development of School
Support in Colonial Massachusetts (Columbia University, Teachers College
Contributions, No. 25, 1909); Kilpatrick, W. H., The Dutch Schools of New
Netherland (Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Education, 1912); McCrady, E.,
Education in South Carolina (Collections of the Historical Society of South
Carolina, vol. IV); Smith, C. L., History of Education in North Carolina (U.
S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, no. 2, 1894); Steiner, B.
C., History of Education in Connecticut (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, no. 2, 1893) and History of Education in Maryland
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, no. 2, 1894), chaps. I-
IV; Stockwell, T. B., History of Public Education in Rhode Island
(Providence Press Co., Providence, 1876), pp. 281-404; and Wickersham, J.
P., History of Education in Pennsylvania (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1886),
chaps. I-XII.

PART IV
MODERN TIMES

CHAPTER XVIII

GROWTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

During the eighteenth century, there appeared the climax to the revolt
against absolutism.

This movement was directed against repression of intellect in the first
half of the century, and against repression of political rights in the
second half. The former phase, through Voltaire, made reason the basis
of society and education, but introduced the tyranny of an intellectual
few; the latter, through Rousseau, promoted an emotionalism and
‘naturalism’ that were in keeping with the sentiments of the times.

The early treatises of Rousseau advocated a complete return to nature,
but his later works somewhat modified this attitude.

The Revolt from Absolutism.—The ideal of universality and of state
control in the education of America and other countries was greatly assisted
by the climax to the general revolt against absolutism and ecclesiasticism
that appeared in the eighteenth century. During this period of time most
strenuous efforts were made to interpret life from a more reasonable and
natural point of view and to overthrow all customs and institutions that did
not square with these tests. This century marked the
The eighteenth
century marked the climax of the rebellion against authority and against the
climax of the enslavement of the individual that had been manifesting
rebellion against the itself in one form or another from the close of the Middle
enslavement of the
individual. Ages. One revival after another—the Renaissance, the
Reformation, realism, Puritanism, Pietism—had burst
forth only to fade away or harden into a new formalism and authoritative
standard. Yet with each effort something was really accomplished for
freedom and progress, and the way was paved for the seemingly abrupt

break from tradition that appears to mark the period roughly included in the
eighteenth century. At this point despotism and ecclesiasticism were
becoming thoroughly intolerable, and the individual tended more and more
to assert his right to be an end in himself. At times all institutional barriers
were swept aside, and in the French Revolution destruction went to an
extreme. The logical consequence of these movements would have been
complete social disintegration, had not the nineteenth century happily made
conscious efforts to justify the eighteenth, and bring out the positions that
were only implied in the negations of the latter. Thus the revolutionary
tendencies and destruction of absolutism in the eighteenth century led to
evolutionary movements and the construction of democracy in the
nineteenth.

The Two Epochs in the Eighteenth Century.—But this revolt of the
eighteenth century from absolutism in politics, religion, and thought, falls
naturally into two parts. During the first half of the century the movement
was directed against repression in theology and intellect,
The revolt against
repression (1) of and during the second half against repression in politics
intellect and (2) of and the rights of man. The former tendency appears in the
political rights. rationalism and skepticism of such men as Voltaire and,
the ‘encyclopedists,’ while the latter becomes evident
chiefly in the emotionalism and ‘naturalism’ of Rousseau. Although these
aspects of the revolutionary movement somewhat overlapped each other
and had certain features in common, they should be clearly distinguished.
The one prepared the way for the other by seeking to destroy existing
abuses, especially of the Church, by the application of reason, but it gave no
ear to the claims of the masses, and sought merely to replace the
traditionalism of the clergy and monarch with the tyranny of an intellectual
few. In distinction to this rule of ‘reason,’ ‘naturalism’ declared that the
intellect could not always be trusted as the proper monitor, but that conduct
could better be guided by the emotions as the true expression of nature. It
opposed the control of intellectual aristocracy and demanded rights for the
common man.

Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.—The rationalistic and scientific
tendency was chiefly developed by Diderot, Voltaire, Condillac,
D’Alembert, and others interested in the production of the French

Encyclopédie. Of all these ‘encyclopedists’ the most keen and brilliant was
Voltaire (1694-1778), who may well serve as the type of the whole
movement. With matchless wit and literary skill, in a remarkable range of
poems, epistles, epigrams, and other writings, he
Championed reason
against traditions, championed reason against the traditional institutions of
State and Church. His chief object of attack was the
powerful Roman Catholic Church, which seemed to him to stand seriously
in the way of all liberty, individuality, and progress, and the slogan with
which he often closed his letters was,—“crush the infamous thing.” The
Protestant beliefs he likewise condemned as hysterical and irrational. While
an exile in England, as the result of a quarrel with a member of the nobility,
he became acquainted with the work of Newton, Harvey, Bacon, Locke, and
others (see pp. 164 f.), and undertook to transplant the
and undertook to
transplant English English scientific movement to France, and make it the
scientific basis of a new régime in society, religion, and education.
movement.
The other rationalistic writers had similar doctrines and
purposes, and, although details of their ideas are hardly worthy of
consideration here, most of them produced treatises upon education. In
these they freely criticised the traditional school systems, and proposed new
theories of organization, content, and method, which
New theories of
education. must later have assisted to demolish the existing theory
and practice in France. Thus rationalism sought to
destroy despotism and superstition, and to establish in their place freedom
in action, social justice, and religious toleration. But in casting away the
old, it swung to the opposite extreme and often degenerated into skepticism,
anarchy, and license. In their fight against despotic
Degenerated into
skepticism and ecclesiasticism, the rationalists often failed to distinguish
license. it from Christianity, and they opposed the Church
because it was irrational rather than because it was not
sincere. They felt that it might have a mission with the masses who were
too dull and uneducated to be able to reason. So while rationalism wielded a
mighty weapon against the fettering of the human intellect, it cared little
about improving the condition of the lower classes, who were sunk in
poverty and ignorance, and were universally oppressed.

Rousseau and His Times.—In opposition to this intellectualistic and
rationalistic attitude, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) developed his
emotionalism and ‘naturalism.’ The social and educational positions of this
reformer find a ready explanation in his antecedents and career. From his
father he inherited a mercurial temperament, love of pleasure, and
irresponsibility, and from his mother a morbid and emotional disposition.
His tendency toward sentimentalism, idleness, and want
Sentimentalism and
want of control. of control was also strengthened by the indulgent aunt
that brought him up, and by low companions during his
trade apprenticeships in the city of Geneva. At sixteen he ran away from the
city, and spent several years in vagrancy, menial service,
Love of nature.
and dissoluteness. A love of nature was impressed upon
him by the wonderful scenery of the country in which he spent his boyhood
and his years of wandering. He also learned to
Sympathy with
poor. sympathize with the poor and oppressed, whose condition
was at this time forced upon his attention. He received
some sporadic instruction, but his education was
Sporadic education.
inaccurate and unsystematic.

At twenty-nine Rousseau settled down in Paris, but his
Blended well with
days of vagabondage had left an ineffaceable stamp upon
inchoate sentiments
of the period. him. His sensitiveness, impulsiveness, love of nature, and
sympathy for the poor were ever afterward in evidence.
These characteristics blended well with a body of inchoate sentiments and
vague longings of this period. It was the day of Louis XV and royal
absolutism, when affairs in the kingdom were controlled by a small clique
of idle and extravagant courtiers. A most artificial system of conduct had
grown up in society. Under this veneer the degraded peasants were ground
down by taxation and forced to minister to the pleasure of a vicious leisure
class. But against this oppression there had gradually arisen an undefined
spirit of protest and a desire to return to the original beneficent state of
nature from which it was felt that man had departed. Hence it happened that
Rousseau, emotional, uncontrolled, and half-trained, was destined to bring
into consciousness and give voice to the revolutionary and naturalistic ideas
and tendencies of the century.

Rousseau’s Works.—In 1750 he first crystallized this spirit of the age and
resultant of his own experience in a discourse on The
His discourses,
Progress of the Arts and Sciences. In this he declared
with much fervor and conviction, though rather illogically, that the existing
oppression and corruption of society were due to the advancement of
civilization. Three years later he wrote his discourse on The Origin of
Inequality among Men. Here again he held that the physical and intellectual
inequalities of nature which existed in primitive society were scarcely
noticeable, but that, with the growth of civilization, most oppressive
distinctions arose. This point of view in a somewhat modified form he
continued in his remarkable romance, The New Heloise,
New Heloise,
published in 1759, and three years afterward in his
influential essay on political ethics, known as the Social
Social Contract,
Contract, and in that most revolutionary treatise on
education, the Emile. The New Heloise commends as
and Emile.
much of primitive conditions as the crystallized
institutions of society will permit. In the Social Contract, Rousseau also
finds the ideal state, not in that of nature, but in a society managed by the
people, where simplicity and natural wants control, and aristocracy and
artificiality do not exist. But the work that has made the name of Rousseau
famous is the Emile. This, while an outgrowth of his naturalism, assumes
the modified position of the later works, and undertakes to show how
education might minimize the drawbacks of civilization and bring man as
near to nature as possible. But the educational influence of the Emile has
been so far-reaching that we must turn to another chapter to study the
positions of Rousseau and the effects of naturalism in education.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), pp. 311-313; History of
Education in Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), pp. 1-10; and Great
Educators (Macmillan, 1912), pp. 77-85; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan,
1905), pp. 533-542. See also Boyd, W., The Educational Theory of
Rousseau (Longmans, Green, 1911); Morley, J., Voltaire and Rousseau
(Macmillan).

CHAPTER XIX

NATURALISM IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Rousseau attempts in the Emile to outline a natural education from
birth to manhood. The first book takes Emile from birth to five years
of age, and deals with the training of physical activities; the second,
from five to twelve, treats of body and sense training; the third, from
twelve to fifteen, is concerned with intellectual education in the natural
sciences; the fourth, from fifteen to twenty, outlines his social and
moral development; and the fifth describes the parasitic training of the
girl he is to marry.

The Emile is often inconsistent, but brilliant and suggestive; and, while
anti-social, the times demanded such a radical presentation. Through it
Rousseau became the progenitor of the social, scientific, and
psychological movements in education.

The first attempt to put the naturalism of Rousseau into actual practice
was made by Basedow. He suggested that education should be
practical in content and playful in method, and he produced texts on
his system, and started a school known as the ‘Philanthropinum.’ He
planned a broad course, and taught languages through conversation,
games, and drawing, and other subjects by natural methods. The
Philanthropinum was at first successful, and this type of school grew
rapidly, but it soon became a fad.

The Influence of Rousseau’s Naturalism.—The
The Emile forced
educational influence of Rousseau’s Emile upon education in all its
thinking. aspects has been tremendous. It is shown by the library of
books since written to contradict, correct, or disseminate
his doctrines. During the quarter of a century following the publication of

the Emile, probably more than twice as many books upon education were
published as in the preceding three-quarters of a century. This epoch-
making work forced a rich harvest of educational thinking for a century
after its appearance, and has affected our ideas upon education from that
day to this.

Naturalistic Basis of the Emile.—In the Emile Rousseau aims to replace
the conventional and formal education of the day with a training that should
be natural and spontaneous. Under the existing régime it was customary for
boys and girls to be dressed like men and women of fashion (Fig. 25), and
for education to be largely one of deportment and the dancing master. On
the intellectual side, education was largely traditional and
The substitution of
a natural education consisted chiefly of a training in Latin grammar, words,
for the conventional and memoriter work. Rousseau scathingly criticises these
type in vogue. practices, and applies his naturalistic principles to an
imaginary pupil named Emile “from the moment of his
birth up to the time when, having become a mature man, he will no longer
need any other guide than himself.” He begins the work with a restatement
of his basal principle that “everything is good as it comes from the hands of
the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.”
After elaborating this, he shows that we are educated by “three kinds of
teachers—nature, man, and things, and since the coöperation of the three
educations is necessary for their perfection, it is to the one over which we
have no control (i e., nature) that we must direct the other two.” Education
must, therefore, conform to nature.

The Five Books of the Emile.—Now the natural objects, through which
Emile is to be educated, remain the same, but Emile
Emile’s impulses
examined and himself changes from time to time. In so far, therefore, as
trained at different he is to be the guide of how he is to be educated in a
periods: natural environment, his impulses must be examined at
different times in his life. Hence the work is divided into
five parts, four of which deal with Emile’s education in the stages of
infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth respectively, and the fifth with the
training of the girl who is to become his wife. The characteristics of the
different periods in the life of Emile are marked by the different kinds of
things he desires.

In the first book, which takes him from birth to five years
In infancy, physical
activities. of age, his main desire is for physical activities, and he
should, therefore, be placed under simple, free, and
healthful conditions, which will enable him to make the most of these. He
must be removed to the country, where he will be close to nature, and
farthest from the contaminating influence of civilization. His growth and
training must be as spontaneous as possible. He must have nothing to do
with either medicine or doctors, “unless his life is in evident danger; for
then they can do nothing worse than kill him.” His natural movements must
not be restrained by caps, bands, or swaddling clothes, and he should be
nursed by his own mother. He should likewise be used to baths of all sorts
of temperature. In fact, the child should not be forced into any fixed ways
whatsoever, since with Rousseau, habit is necessarily something contrary to
impulse and so unnatural. “The only habit,” says he, “which the child
should be allowed to form is to contract no habit whatsoever.” His
playthings should be such simple products of nature as “branches with their
fruits and flowers, or a poppy-head in which the seeds are heard to rattle.”
Language that is simple, plain, and hence natural, should be used with him,
and he should not be hurried beyond nature in learning to talk. He should be
restricted to a few words that express real thoughts for him.

The education of Emile during infancy is thus to be ‘negative’ and purely
physical. The aim is simply to keep his instincts and impulses, which
Rousseau holds to be good by nature, free from vice, and to afford him the
natural activity he craves. Next, in the period of
In childhood, limb
and sense childhood, between the years of five and twelve, which is
development, treated in the second book, Emile desires most to exercise
his legs and arms, and to touch, to see, and in other ways
to sense things. This, therefore, is the time for training his limbs and senses.
“As all that enters the human understanding comes there through the senses,
the first reason of man is a sensuous reason. Our first teachers of
philosophy are our feet, our hands, and our eyes.... In order to learn to think,
we must then exercise our limbs, our senses, and our organs, which are the
instruments of our intelligence.” To obtain this training, Emile is to wear
short, loose, and scanty clothing, go bareheaded, and have the body inured
to cold and heat, and be generally subjected to a ‘hardening process’ similar

to that recommended by Locke (see p. 181). He is to learn to swim, and
practice long and high jumps, leaping walls, and scaling rocks. But, what is
more important, his eyes and ears are also to be exercised through natural
problems in weighing, measuring, and estimating masses, heights, and
distances. Drawing and constructive geometry are to be taught him, to
render him more capable of observing accurately. His ear is to be rendered
sensitive to harmony by learning to sing.

This body and sense training should be the nearest approach to an
intellectual training at this period. Rousseau condemns the usual unnatural
practice of requiring pupils to learn so much before they have reached the
proper years. In keeping with his ‘negative’ education, he asks rhetorically:
“Shall I venture to state at this point the most important, the most useful,
rule of all education? It is not to gain time, but to lose it.”
no geography,
history, or reading, During his childhood Emile is not to study geography,
history, or languages, upon which pedagogues ordinarily
depend to exhibit the attainments of their pupils, although these understand
nothing of what they have memorized. “At the age of twelve, Emile will
hardly know what a book is. But I shall be told it is very necessary that he
know how to read. This I grant. It is necessary that he know how to read
when reading is useful to him. Until then, it serves only to annoy him.”

Incidentally, however, in order to make Emile tolerable in society, for he
cannot entirely escape it, he must be given the idea of
though moral
training through property and some ideas about conduct. But this is simply
‘natural because of practical necessity, and no moral education is
consequences.’ to be given as such, for, “until he reaches the age of
reason, he can form no idea of moral beings or social
relations.” He is to learn through ‘natural consequences’ until he arrives at
the age for understanding moral precepts. If he breaks the furniture or the
windows, let him suffer the consequences that arise from his act. Do not
preach to him or punish him for lying, but afterward affect not to believe
him even when he has spoken the truth. If he carelessly digs up the
sprouting melons of the gardener, in order to plant beans for himself, let the
gardener in turn uproot the beans, and thus cause him to learn the
sacredness of property. As far as this moral training is given, then, it is to be
indirect and incidental.

However, between twelve and fifteen, after the demands
In boyhood,
of the boy’s physical activities and of his senses have
intellectual training
through curiosity somewhat abated, there comes “an interval when his
concerning natural faculties and powers are greater than his desires,” when
phenomena.
he displays an insistent curiosity concerning natural
phenomena and a constant appetite for rational knowledge. This period,
which is dealt with in his third book, Rousseau declares to be intended by
nature itself as the time for instruction. But as not much can be learned
within three years, the boy is to study only those subjects which are useful
and not incomprehensible and misleading, and so is limited to the natural
sciences. Later in this third book, in order that Emile may informally learn
the interdependence of men and may himself become economically
independent, Rousseau adds industrial experience and the acquisition of
cabinet-making to his training. The most effective method of instruction,
Rousseau holds, comes through appealing to the curiosity and interest in
investigation, which are so prominent in the boy at this time. He contrasts
the current methods of teaching astronomy and geography by means of
globes, maps, and other misleading representations, with the more natural
plan of stimulating inquiry through observing the sun when rising and
setting during the different seasons, and through problems concerning the
topography of the neighborhood. Emile is taught to appreciate the value of
these subjects by being lost in the forest, and endeavoring to find a way out.
He learns the elements of electricity through meeting with a juggler, who
attracts an artificial duck by means of a concealed magnet. He similarly
discovers through experience the effect of cold and heat upon solids and
liquids, and so comes to understand the thermometer and other instruments.
Hence Rousseau feels that all knowledge of real value may be acquired
most clearly and naturally without the use of rivalry or textbooks. But he
finds an exception to this irrational method in one book, Robinson Crusoe,
“where all the natural needs of man are exhibited in a manner obvious to
the mind of a child, and where the means of providing for these needs are
successively developed with the same facility.”

The fourth book takes Emile from the age of fifteen to
In youth, sex
interests, as basis of twenty. At this period the sex interests appear and should
moral and social be properly guided and trained, especially as they are the
training. basis of social and moral relationships. Emile’s first

passion calls him into relations with his species, and he must now learn to
live with others. “We have formed his body, his senses, and his intelligence;
it remains to give him a heart.” He is to become moral, affectionate, and
religious. Here again Rousseau insists that the training is not to be
accomplished by the formal method of precepts, but in a natural way by
bringing the youth into contact with his fellowmen and appealing to his
emotions. Emile is to visit infirmaries, hospitals, and prisons, and witness
concrete examples of wretchedness in all stages, although not so frequently
as to become hardened. That this training may not render him cynical or
hypercritical, it should be corrected by the study of history, where one sees
men simply as a spectator without feeling or passion. Further, in order to
deliver Emile from vanity, so common during adolescence, he is to be
exposed to flatterers, spendthrifts, and sharpers, and allowed to suffer the
consequences. He may at this time also be guided in his conduct by the use
of fables, for “by censuring the wrongdoer under an unknown mask, we
instruct without offending him.”

Emile at length becomes a man, and a life companion
The passive and
must be found for him. A search should be made for a
parasitic education
of woman. suitable lady, but “in order to find her, we must know
her.” Accordingly, the last book of the Emile deals with
the model Sophie and the education of woman. It is the weakest part of
Rousseau’s work. He entirely misinterprets the nature of women, and does
not allow them any individuality of their own, but considers them as simply
supplementary to the nature of men. Like men, women should be given
adequate bodily training, but rather for the sake of physical charms and of
producing vigorous offspring than for their own development. Their
instinctive love of pleasing through dress should be made of service by
teaching them sewing, embroidery, lacework, and designing. They ought to
be obedient and industrious, and they ought early to be brought under
restraint. Girls should also be taught singing, dancing, and other
accomplishments. They should be instructed dogmatically in religion, and
in ethical matters they should be largely guided by public opinion. A
woman may not learn philosophy, art, or science, but she should study men.
“She must learn to penetrate their feelings through their conversation, their
actions, their looks, and their gestures, and know how to give them the
feelings which are pleasing to her, without even seeming to think of them.”

Estimate of the Emile.—Such was Rousseau’s notion of the natural
individualistic education for a man and the passive and repressive training
suitable for a woman, and of the happiness and prosperity that were bound
to ensue. To make a fair estimate of the Emile and its
Defects outweighed
by merits. influence is not easy. It is necessary to put aside all of
one’s prejudices against the weak and offensive
personality of the author, and to forget the inconsistencies and
contradictions of the work itself. The Emile has always been accounted a
work of great richness, power, and underlying wisdom, and each of its
defects is more than balanced by a corresponding merit. Moreover, the most
fundamental movements in modern educational progress—sociological,
scientific, and psychological—may be said to have germinated through the
Emile.

The Sociological Movements in Modern Education.—The most marked
feature of the Rousselian education and the one most subject to criticism
has been its extreme revolt against civilization and all
Revolt from social
control, social control. A state of nature is held to be the ideal
condition, and all social relations are regarded as
degenerate. The child is to be brought up in isolation by the laws of brute
necessity and to have no social education until he is fifteen, when an
impossible set of expedients for bringing him into touch with his fellows is
devised. One should remember, however, that the times and the cause had
need of just so extreme a doctrine. Such radical
but extreme
doctrine needed, individualism alone could enable him to break the
bondage to the past. By means of paradoxes and
exaggerations he was able to emphasize the crying need of a natural
development of man, and to tear down the effete traditions in educational
organization, content, and methods. And many of the social movements in
modern educational organization and content were made possible and even
suggested by him, after having thus cleared the ground. He held that all
members of society should be trained industrially so as to contribute to their
own support and should be taught to be sympathetic and benevolent toward
their fellows. Thus through him education has been more
and those who
followed Rousseau closely related to human welfare. The industrial work of
stressed social Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, the moral aim of education
activities. held by Herbart, the ‘social participation’ in the practice

of Froebel, and the present-day emphasis upon vocational education, moral
instruction, and training of defectives and of other extreme variations, alike
find some of their roots in the Emile. In fact, the fallacy involved in
Rousseau’s isolated education is too palpable to mislead anyone, and those
who have best caught his spirit and endeavored to develop his practice have
in all cases most insistently stressed social activities in the training of
children and striven to make education lead to a closer and more
sympathetic coöperation in society.

The Scientific Movement in Modern Education.—
Opposed to all
books, but Moreover, since Rousseau repudiated all social traditions
emphasized and accepted nature as his only guide, he was absolutely
observational work.
opposed to all book learning and exaggerated the value of
observation. He consequently neglected the past, and
would have robbed the pupil of all the experience of his fellows and of
those who had gone before. But he emphasized the use of natural objects in
the curriculum and developed the details of nature study and observational
work to an extent never previously undertaken. Partly as a result of this
influence, schools and colleges have come to include in their course the
study of physical forces, natural environment, plants, and animals. Therein
Rousseau not only anticipates somewhat the nature study and geography of
Pestalozzi, Basedow, Salzmann, and Ritter, but, in a way, foreshadows the
arguments of Spencer and Huxley, and the modern scientific movement in
education.

The Psychological Movements in Modern Education.
Though defective in
knowledge of —A matter of even greater importance is Rousseau’s
children, Rousseaubelief that education should be in accordance with the
saw the need of natural interests of the child. Although his knowledge of
studying them.
children was defective, and his recommendations were
marred by unnatural breaks and filled with sentimentality, he saw the need
of studying the child as the only basis for education. In the Preface to the
Emile he declares that “the wisest among us are engrossed in what the adult
needs to know and fail to consider what children are able to apprehend. We
are always looking for the man in the child, without thinking of what he is
before he becomes a man. This is the study to which I have devoted myself,
to the end that, even though my whole method may be chimerical and false,

the reader may still profit by my observation.” As a result of such appeals,
the child has become the center of discussion in modern training. Despite
his limitations and prejudices, this unnatural and neglectful parent stated
many details of child development with much force and clearness and gave
an impetus to later reformers.

In this connection should especially be considered Rousseau’s theory of
stages of development. He makes a sharp division of the
Theory of ‘delayed
maturing.’ pupil’s development into definite periods that seem but
little connected with one another, and prescribes a distinct
education for each stage. This seems like a breach of the evolution of the
individual, and the reductio ad absurdum of such an atomic training is
reached in his hope of rendering Emile warm-hearted and pious, after
keeping him in the meshes of self-interest and doubt until he is fifteen. But,
as in the case of his attitude toward society, Rousseau takes an extreme
view, and he has thereby shown that there are characteristic differences at
different stages in the child’s life, and that only as the proper activities are
provided for each stage will it reach maturity or perfection. He may,
therefore, be credited to a great degree with the increasing tendency to
cease from forcing upon children a fixed method of thinking, feeling, and
acting, and for the gradual disappearance of the old ideas that a task is of
educational value according as it is distasteful, and that real education
consists in overcoming meaningless difficulties. Curiosity and interest
rather are to be used as motives for study, and Rousseau therein points the
way for the Herbartians. It is likewise due to him primarily that we have
recognized the need of physical activities and sense
Physical activities
and sense training training in the earlier development of the child as a
foundation for its later growth and learning. To these
recommendations may be traced much of the object teaching of
Pestalozzianism and the motor expression of Froebelianism. Thus Rousseau
made a large contribution to educational method by showing the value of
motivation, of creating problems, and of utilizing the senses and activities
of the child, and may be regarded as the father of the psychological
movements in modern education. He could not, however, have based his
study of children and his advanced methods upon any real psychological
foundation, for in his day the ‘faculty’ psychology (see p. 182) absolutely
prevailed. Instead of working out his methods from scientific principles, he

obtained them, as did Pestalozzi afterwards, through his
Sympathetic
understanding of sympathetic understanding of the child and his ability to
the child. place himself in the child’s situation and see the world
through the eyes of the child.

The Spread of Rousseau’s Doctrines.—Thus seeds of many modern
developments in educational organization, method, and content, were sown
by Rousseau, and he is seen to be the intellectual
Intellectual
progenitor of progenitor of Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, Spencer, and
modern reformers, many other modern reformers. But his principles did not
but influence upon take immediate hold on the schools themselves, although
schools not
immediate. their influence is manifest there as the nineteenth century
advanced. In France they were apparent in the complaints
and recommendations concerning schools in the lists of desired reforms
(cahiers) that were issued by the various towns, and afterward clearly
formed a basis for much of the legislation concerning the universal, free,
and secular organization of educational institutions. In England, since there
was no national system of schools, little direct impression was made upon
educational practice. But in America this revolutionary thought would seem
to have had much to do with causing the unrest that gradually resulted in
upsetting the aristocratic and formal training of the young and in
secularizing and universalizing the public school system. The first definite
attempt, however, to put into actual practice the naturalistic education of
Rousseau occurred in Germany through the writings of
First attempt
through Basedow. Basedow and the foundation of the ‘Philanthropinum,’
and is of sufficient importance to demand separate
discussion.

Development of Basedow’s Educational Reforms.—Johann Bernhard
Basedow (1723-1790) was by nature the very person to
Naturally captivated
by Rousseau’s be captivated by Rousseau’s doctrines. He was talented,
doctrines. but erratic, unorthodox, tactless, and irregular in life. He
had been prepared at the University of Leipzig for the
Lutheran ministry, but proved too heretical, and, giving up this vocation,
became a tutor in Holstein to a Herr von Quaalen’s children. With these
aristocratic pupils he first developed methods of teaching through
conversation and play connected with surrounding objects. A few years

after this, in 1763, Basedow fell under the spell of Rousseau’s Emile, which
was most congenial to his methods of thinking and teaching, and turned all
his energy toward educational reform. As in the case of Rousseau with
education in France, he realized that German education of the day was sadly
in need of just such an antidote as ‘naturalism’ was
Education of the
day needed calculated to furnish. The schoolrooms were dismal and
naturalism. the work was unpleasant, physical training was neglected,
and the discipline was severe. Children were regarded as
adults in miniature (Fig. 25), and were so treated both in their dress and
their education. The current schooling consisted largely of instruction in
artificial deportment. The study of classics composed the entire intellectual
curriculum, and the methods were purely grammatical. As a result,
suggestions made by Basedow for educational improvement attained as
great popularity as his advanced theological propositions had received
abuse.

In 1768 by his Address on Schools and Studies, and their Influence on the
Public Weal, he called generally upon princes, governments, ecclesiastics,
and others in power, to assist him financially in certain definite educational
reforms. In addition to suggesting that the schools be made nonsectarian
and that public instruction be placed under a National Council of Education,
he proposed that, in contrast to the formal and unattractive training of the
day, education should be rendered practical in content
Success of his
Address and and playful in method. To assist this reform, he planned
production of his to bring out a work on elementary education, which he
text-books. described in outline. Great interest in his proposals was
shown throughout Europe by sovereigns, nobles,
prominent men, and others desiring a nonsectarian and more effective
education, and a subsidy of some ten thousand dollars was speedily raised,
to enable him to perfect his plans. Six years later, Basedow completed his
promised text-book, Elementarwerk, and the companion work for teachers
and parents known as Methodenbuch. The Elementarwerk was
accompanied by a volume containing ninety-six plates, which illustrated the
subject-matter of the text, but were too large to be bound in with it. While
in these manuals Basedow included many naturalistic ideas from Rousseau,
he also embodied features from other reformers and even additions of his
own.

Text-books and Other Works.—The Elementarwerk
Elementarwerk
clearly combines many of the principles of Comenius as
well as of Rousseau. It has, in fact, been often called ‘the Orbis Pictus (see
p. 170) of the eighteenth century,’ and gives a knowledge
and Methodenbuch.
of things and words in the form of a dialogue. The
Methodenbuch, while not following Rousseau completely, contains many
ideas concerning natural training that are suggestive of him. In this study of
the nature of children, the book makes some advance upon the Rousselian
doctrine by finding that they are especially interested in motion and noise,
although Basedow would have shocked Rousseau by being so much under
the control of tradition as to suggest using these interests in the teaching of
Latin. Later, Basedow, together with Campe, Salzmann, and others of his
followers, also produced a series of popular story books especially adapted
to the character, interests, and needs of children. These
Popular story books
for children. works are all largely filled with didactics, moralizing,
religiosity, and scraps of scientific information. The best
known of them is Robinson der Jüngere (Robinson Crusoe Junior), which
was published by Campe in 1779. It seems to have been suggested by
Rousseau’s recommendation of Robinson Crusoe as a text-book, and in turn
a generation later it became the model for Der Schweizerische Robinson
(The Swiss Family Robinson) of Wyss, which has been so popular with
children in America and elsewhere.

Course and Methods of the Philanthropinum.—Eight years before this,
however, Prince Leopold of Dessau had been induced to allow Basedow to
found there a model school called the ‘Philanthropinum,’ which should
embody that reformer’s ideas. Leopold granted him a
Salary, equipment,
generous salary, and three years later gave him an
equipment of buildings, grounds, and endowment. At first Basedow had but
three assistants, but later the number was considerably
teachers,
increased. The staff then included several very able men,
such as Campe, formerly chaplain at Potsdam, and Salzmann, who had been
a professor at Erfurt. The underlying principle of the Philanthropinum was
‘everything according to nature.’ The natural instincts and interests of the
children were only to be directed and not altogether suppressed. They were
to be trained as children and not as adults, and the
and pupils.
methods of learning were to be adapted to their stage of

mentality. That all of the customary fashion and unnaturalness might be
eliminated, the boys were plainly dressed and their hair cut short.

While universal education was believed in, and rich and
Universal
education, but poor alike were to be trained, the traditional idea still
social distinctions.obtained that the natural education of the one class was
for social activity and leadership, and of the other for
teaching. Consequently, the wealthy boys were to spend six hours in school
and two in manual labor, while those from families of small means labored
six hours and studied two. Every one, however, was
Industrial training
taught handicrafts,—carpentry, turning, planing, and
threshing, as suggested in the third book of the Emile, and there were also
physical exercises and games for all. On the intellectual side, while Latin
was not neglected, considerable attention was paid to the vernacular and
French. In keeping with the Elementarwerk, Basedow planned a wide
objective and practical course very similar to that
and wide objective
course. suggested by Comenius. It was to give some account of
man, including bits of anthropology, anatomy, and
physiology; of brute creation, especially the uses of domestic animals and
their relation to industry; of trees and plants with their growth, culture, and
products; of minerals and chemicals; of mathematical and physical
instruments; and of trades, history, and commerce. He afterward admitted
that he had overestimated the amount of content that was possible for a
child, and greatly abridged the material.

The most striking characteristic of the school, however, was its recognition
of child interests and the consequently improved
Languages taught
by conversation and methods. Languages were taught by speaking and then by
games. reading, and grammar was not brought in until late in the
course. Facility in Latin was acquired through
conversation, games, pictures, drawing, acting plays, and reading on
practical and interesting subjects (Fig. 26). His
Progressive
methods in other instruction in arithmetic, geometry, geography, physics,
subjects. nature study, and history was fully as progressive as that
in languages, and, while continuing Rousseau’s
suggestions, seems to anticipate much of the ‘object teaching’ of Pestalozzi.
Arithmetic was taught by mental methods, geometry by drawing figures

accurately and neatly, and geography by beginning with one’s home and
extending out into the neighborhood, the town, the country, and the
continent.

Influence of the Philanthropinum.—The attendance at the
Philanthropinum was very small in the beginning, since the institution was
regarded as an experiment, but eventually the number of pupils rose to more
than fifty. Most visitors were greatly pleased with the
Great expectations.
school, especially on account of the interested and alert
appearance of the pupils. Kant declared that it meant “not a slow reform,
but a quick revolution,” although afterward he admitted that he had been
too optimistic. While it may not have served well for older pupils, it was
certainly excellent in its stimulus to children under ten or
Stimulus for
younger pupils. twelve, who can be reached by appeals to physical
activities and the senses better than by books.

Basedow, however, proved temperamentally unfit to
Similar institutions
of Campe, direct the institution. Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-
1818), who first succeeded him, withdrew within a year
to found a similar school at Hamburg. Institutions of the same type sprang
up elsewhere, and some of them had a large influence upon education. The
most striking and enduring of these schools was that established in 1784 by
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744-1811) at
Salzmann,
Schnepfenthal under the patronage of the royal family of
Saxe-Gotha. The natural surroundings—mountains, valleys, lakes—were
most favorable for the purpose of the institution, and much attention was
given to nature study, ‘lessons on things,’ organized excursions, gardening,
agricultural work, and care of domestic animals. Manual training,
gymnastics, sports, informal moral and religious culture, and other features
that anticipated later developments in education also formed part of the
course. During the decade before the establishment of Salzmann’s school,
institutions embodying many of Basedow’s ideas were also opened at
Rechahn and his other Brandenburg estates by Baron
and Rochow.
Eberhard von Rochow (1734-1805). His schools were
simply intended to improve the peasantry in their methods of farming and
living, but, when this step toward universal education proved

extraordinarily successful, Rochow advocated the adoption of a complete
national system of schools on a nonsectarian basis.

In 1793 the Philanthropinum at Dessau was closed permanently. Its teachers
were scattered through Europe, and gave a great impulse to the new
education. An unfortunate result of this popularity was
Becomes a fad, but
accomplished some that the Philanthropinum became a fad, and schools with
good. this name were opened everywhere in Germany by
educational mountebanks. These teachers prostituted the
system to their own ends, degraded the profession into a mere trade, and
became the subject of much satire and ridicule. Nevertheless, the
philanthropinic movement seems not to have been without good results,
especially when we consider the educational conditions and the pedagogy
of the times. It introduced many new ideas concerning methods and
industrial training into all parts of France and Switzerland, as well as
Germany, and these were carefully worked out by such reformers as
Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart. In this way there were embodied in
education the first positive results of Rousseau’s ‘naturalism.’

Fig. 25.—The child as a miniature adult.
(Reproduced from a French fashion plate of the eighteenth century.)

Fig. 26.—A naturalistic school.
(Reproduced from the Elementarwerk of Basedow.)

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, In Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), chap. II; and Great Educators
(Macmillan, 1912), chaps. VII and VIII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan,
1905), chap. X; Parker, S. C., History of Modern Elementary Education
(Ginn, 1912), chaps. VIII-X. The Emile (Translated by Payne; Appleton,
1895) should be read, and the Elementarwerk (Wiegandt, Leipzig, 1909)
should be examined. A judicial description of the life and work of Rousseau
is that by Morley, J. (Macmillan), while Davidson, T., furnishes an
interesting interpretation of Rousseau and Education from Nature (Scribner,
1902), but the standard treatise on The Educational Theory of Rousseau
(Longmans, Green, 1911) at present has been written by Boyd, W. A good
brief account of Basedow: His Educational Work and Principles (Kellogg,

New York, 1891) is afforded by Lang, O. H. See also Barnard, H.,
American Journal of Education, vol. V, pp. 487-520.

CHAPTER XX

PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

In England, during the eighteenth century, there were numerous
attempts to provide education for the poor through charity schools. The
most important factor in maintaining these institutions was the Society
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

Among other organizations, there sprang up a Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which supported schools
throughout the American colonies, except Virginia. Charity schools
were also maintained in America by various other agencies.

An attempt was likewise made by Raikes of Gloucester, England, to
establish Sunday schools, for training the poor to read, and these
institutions spread throughout the British Isles and America.

A system of instruction through monitors, developed by Lancaster and
Bell, while formal and mechanical, furnished a sort of substitute for
national education in England, and, spreading throughout the United
States, paved the way for state support, and greatly improved the
methods of teaching.

‘Infant schools’ for poor children also grew up during the nineteenth
century in France, England, and the United States, and found a
permanent place in the national systems, but they soon became
formalized and mechanical.

Philanthropic education proved a first step toward universal and
national education.

Reconstructive Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century.—The eighteenth
century cannot be regarded altogether as a period of revolution and
destruction. While such a characterization describes the prevailing
tendencies, there were also social and educational forces that looked to
evolution and reform rather than to a complete disintegration of society and
a return to primitive living. Even in Rousseau, the arch-
Even in Rousseau
and the destroyer of traditions, we found many evidences of a
philanthropinists, reconstruction along higher lines, and such a positive
movement was decidedly obvious in Basedow, Salzmann,
and other philanthropinists. But in England reforms were especially
apparent. In the land of the Briton, progress is proverbially gradual, and
sweeping victories and Waterloo defeats in affairs of society and education
are alike unwonted. The French tendency to cut short the social and
educational process and to substitute revolution for
and especially in
England. evolution is out of accord with the spirit across the
English Channel.

The Rise of Charity Schools in England.—And yet conditions in England
at this time might well have incited people to revolution. Wages were low,
employment was irregular, and the laboring classes, who
Wretched
conditions of numbered fully one-sixth of the population, were clad in
laboring class. rags, lived in hovels, and often went hungry.
Opportunities for elementary education were rare. The
few schools that remained after the Reformation had largely lost their
endowments or had been perverted into secondary institutions, and had
suffered from incompetent and negligent masters and from the religious
upheaval of the times. It was as a partial remedy for this situation, that,
toward the close of the seventeenth century, there sprang up a succession of
‘charity schools,’ in which children of the poor were not
Charity schools as
remedy. only taught, but boarded and sometimes provided with
clothes, and the boys were prepared for apprenticeship
and the girls for domestic service. Probably about one thousand schools
upon this general philanthropic basis had been established in England and
Wales by the middle of the eighteenth century. Most of these had received
substantial endowment, but numbers of them were maintained by private
subscriptions.

The Schools of the S. P. C. K.—A factor that was even more important in
opening charity schools was the ‘Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge’ (often abbreviated to S. P. C. K.). This society was founded in
1698 by Reverend Thomas Bray, D. D., and four other
Foundation,
clergymen and philanthropists. As a rule, its schools were
established, supported, and managed by local people, but
management,
the Society guaranteed their maintenance, and assisted
them from its own treasury whenever a stringency in funds arose. The S. P.
C. K. also inspected schools, and advised and encouraged the local
managers, and furnished bibles, prayer books, and
books,
catechisms at the cheapest rates possible. It made
stringent regulations of eligibility for its schoolmasters, requiring, in
addition to the usual religious, moral, pedagogical, and
teachers,
age tests, that they be members of the Church of England
and approved by the minister of the parish. Each master was expected to
teach the children their catechism, and purge them of bad morals and
manners, besides training them in reading, writing, and
and course.
elementary arithmetic. The pupils were, moreover,
clothed, boarded, and at times even lodged.

The number of charity schools of the S. P. C. K. grew by leaps and bounds,
and by the close of the first decade there were eighty-eight within a radius
of ten miles of London. The gifts made had amounted to
Development,
almost ten thousand pounds, and nearly one thousand
boys and over four hundred girls had been sent out as apprentices. And
before the middle of the eighteenth century the total number of these charity
schools in England and Wales reached nearly two thousand, with about fifty
thousand boys and girls in attendance. This increase in facilities for the
education of the poor was not kindly received by many in the upper classes,
who often felt that “there is no need for any learning at all for the meanest
ranks of mankind: their business is to labour, not to
opposition and
advocacy, think.” But the charity schools had also many warm
supporters, and Addison even believed that as a result of
them there would be “few in the next generation who will not at least be
able to write and read, and have not an early tincture of religion.” The
benefactions for these institutions continued to increase for nearly half a
century, but by the middle of the eighteenth century popular interest had

waned. The subscriptions began to fall off, the system of
decadence,
inspection and the teaching became less effective, and the
schools ceased to expand. Nevertheless, the S. P. C. K. had succeeded in
impressing the Church of England with a sense of
and influence.
responsibility for the establishment of a national school
system upon a religious basis. Its schools were largely continued throughout
the eighteenth century, and in most instances after 1811 were absorbed by
the new educational organization of the English Church, the so-called
‘National Society’ (see p. 239).

Other British Charity Schools.—These institutions of the Church of
England society may be regarded as typical of British charity schools in
general. There were, however, also a dozen well-known
Nonconformist
schools. foundations by nonconformists, including the ‘Gravel
Lane School’ of Southwark, London, which was started
over a decade before the S. P. C. K. was organized. And an interesting type
of philanthropic institution known as ‘circulating
‘Circulating
schools.’ schools’ was founded in Wales. These schools simply
aimed to teach pupils to read the Bible in Welsh, and
when this had been accomplished in one neighborhood, the school was
transferred to another. But a much more important organization was the
offshoot of the S. P. C. K., that arose chiefly to carry on charity schools in
the American colonies. This association, the ‘Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts,’ (commonly known as S. P.
Foundation of the
S. P. G. G.), was founded by Dr. Bray three years after the parent
society, but no schools were established for several years.

The Charity Schools of the S. P. G.—The first school of
S. P. G. school in
New York City,— the S. P. G. was opened in New York City in 1709 under
William Huddleston, who had been conducting a school
of his own there. It was intended that the new school should follow the plan
of the charity schools in England, but, while free tuition and free books
were granted from the beginning, it was not until many years later that the
means of clothing the children gratuitously was provided. Under different
masters and with varying fortunes, the school was supported by the society
until 1783, when the United States had finally cut loose from the Mother
Country and started on a career of its own. Meanwhile Trinity Church had

come more and more to take the initiative in the endowment and support of
the school, and since the withdrawal of the society from
now ‘Trinity
Church School.’ America the institution has been known as ‘Trinity
Church School.’

Schools of the same type were active throughout the colonies in the
eighteenth century. We possess more or less complete accounts of these
institutions in New York and all the other colonies,
Other colonies
except Virginia, where they were not believed to be
needed. Except for size and local peculiarities, all of them closely
resembled the school in New York City. The attendance
Attendance,
ranged from eighteen or twenty pupils to nearly four
times that number. Girls were generally admitted, and occasionally equalled
or exceeded the boys in number. As a rule, children of other denominations
were received on the same terms as those of Church of England members,
and at times nearly one-half the attendance was composed of dissenters, but
often those outside the Church were given secondary consideration, or the
catechism was so stressed by the school that the dissenting children were
withdrawn and rival schools set up. The character of the
course, and books.
course of study in these charity schools is further
indicated by the books furnished by the society. In packets of various sizes
it sent over horn-books, primers, spellers, writing-paper and ink-horns,
catechisms, psalters, prayer books, testaments, and bibles. There is also
some evidence that secondary instruction was carried on intermittently in
the various centers by the missionaries or by the schoolmasters in
conjunction with their elementary work.

Throughout its work in the American colonies the S. P. G.
Opposition to the S.
P. G. met with various forms of opposition. The dissenters,
Quakers, and others were often openly hostile through
fear of the foundation of an established national church similar to that of
England, and both sides displayed considerable sectarianism and bigotry.
After 1750 the opposition to the society increased in bitterness and became
more general, owing to the feeling that its agents were supporting the king
against the colonists. Yet its patronage of schools was most philanthropic
and important for American education in the eighteenth century. While it
insisted upon the interpretation of Christianity adopted by the Church of

England, it stood first and foremost for the extension of religion and
education to the virgin soil of America. It carried on its
Its devotion and
generosity, labors with devoted interest and showed great generosity
in the maintenance of schools, and the support of schools
in the colonies by the S. P. G. must have exerted some
and influence upon
universal education. influence toward universal education.

Charity Schools among the Pennsylvania Germans.—During the
eighteenth century the efforts of the S. P. G. were supplemented by the
formation of minor associations and the establishment of other charity
schools in various colonies. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance was the
organization in 1753 of ‘A Society for Propagating the Knowledge of God
among the Germans,’ and the maintenance of schools among the sects of
Pennsylvania. These schools were managed by a general
Organization,
colonial board of six trustees, who visited the schools
annually and awarded prizes for English orations and
course, and
attainments in civic and religious duties. The course of
study included instruction in “both the English and German languages;
likewise in writing, keeping of common accounts, singing of psalms, and
the true principles of the holy Protestant religion.” Twenty-five schools
were planned, but probably there were never more than half that number.
The schools lasted only about a decade, as the Germans
disappearance of S.
P. K. G. schools. soon came to feel that this English schooling threatened
their language, nationality, and institutions.

The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in Great Britain.—A variety of charity
school, quite different from those already mentioned, sprang up toward the
close of the century under the name of ‘Sunday Schools.’ To overcome the
prevailing ignorance, vice, and squalor in the
Foundation,
manufacturing center of Gloucester, England, Robert
Raikes in 1780 set up a school in Sooty Alley for the instruction of children
and adults in religion and the rudiments. Six months later he started a new
school in Southgate street, and soon had other schools established. He paid
his teachers a shilling each Sunday to train the children to read in the Bible,
spell, and write. This charity education, meager as it was,
opposition,
was attacked by many of the upper classes, and was often
viewed with suspicion by the recipients themselves. Yet the new movement

had warm supporters among the nobility and such
advocacy, and
spread. reformers as Wesley, and the schools soon spread to
London, and then throughout England, Wales, Ireland,
Scotland, and the Channel Islands. A Sunday School Society was founded
in 1785, and within a decade distributed nearly one hundred thousand
spellers, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five thousand bibles,
and trained approximately sixty-five thousand pupils in one thousand
schools.

The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in the United States.—The Raikes
system of Sunday instruction was also soon introduced in America. The first
school was organized in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the
Individual centers
house of Thomas Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia,
and within a quarter of a century a number of schools arose in various
cities. Before long, permanent associations were also
and permanent
associations. started to promote Sunday instruction. ‘The First Day or
Sunday School Society’ was organized at Philadelphia in
1791, and during the first two decades of the nineteenth century a number
of similar societies for secular instruction on Sunday were founded in New
York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 1823 these associations were
all absorbed into a new and broader organization, known ever since as the
‘American Sunday School Union.’ At the start it published suitable reading-
books, and furnished primers, spellers, testaments, and hymn-books to
needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate.

Value of the Instruction in ‘Sunday Schools.’—Both in Great Britain and
the United States, however, the Sunday schools gradually tended to
abandon their secular instruction and become purely
Makeshift, but
prepared the way religious. At the same time the teachers came to serve
for universal without pay and to instruct less efficiently. And the value
education. of the secular teaching was not large at the best, as the
work was necessarily limited to a few hours once a week.
Raikes and all others interested in these institutions recognized their
inadequacy as a means of securing universal education, and regarded them
merely as auxiliary to a more complete system of instruction. But while a
makeshift and by no means a final solution for national education, they

performed a notable service for the times, and helped point the way to
universal education.

The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.—While philanthropic
education started largely in the eighteenth century, some of the schools
continued well into the nineteenth. This was especially the case with the
‘monitorial’ system, started at Southwark in 1798. This district of London
was thronged with barefoot and unkempt children; and
Lancaster
Lancaster, the founder of the school, undertook to
educate as many as he could. His schoolroom was soon filled with a
hundred or more pupils. In order to teach them all, he used the older pupils
as assistants. He taught the lesson first to these ‘monitors,’ and they in turn
imparted it to the others, who were divided into equal groups. Each monitor
cared for a single group. The work was very successful from the first, but
Lancaster, attempting to introduce schools of this kind throughout England,
fell so recklessly into debt that an association had to be founded in 1808 to
continue the work on a practical basis. Within half a dozen years Lancaster
withdrew from the organization, but the association,
and the British and
Foreign Society; under the name of the ‘British and Foreign Society,’
continued to flourish and found new schools.

So successful was the Lancasterian work that the Church of England,
fearing its nonsectarian influence upon education, in 1811 organized ‘The
National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles
of the Established Church.’ This long-named association was to conduct
monitorial schools under the management of Doctor
Bell and the
National Society. Andrew Bell, who had experimented with the system in
India before Lancaster opened his school. Although they
had formed no part of Bell’s original methods, the Anglican catechism and
prayer book were now taught dogmatically in the schools founded by the
National Society. Bell proved an admirable director, and a healthy rivalry
sprang up between the societies.

Value of the Monitorial System in England.—The
Differences in the
two systems. plans of the two organizations were similar, but differed
somewhat in details. Both used monitors and taught
writing by means of a desk covered with sand, but the system of Lancaster

was animated by broader motives and had many more devices for teaching.
It also instituted company organization, drill, and precision, and developed
a system of badges, offices, rewards, and punishments. Monitorial
instruction, however, was not original with either
Both were
unoriginal Lancaster or Bell. It had long been used by the Hindus
and others, although the work of the two societies
brought it into prominence. It overemphasized repetition
and mechanical.
and recitation mechanics, and consisted of a formal drill
rather than a method of instruction.

Yet the monitorial schools were productive of some
Afforded substitute
for national achievements. Most of them afforded a fair education in
education. the elementary school subjects and added some industrial
and vocational training. They also did much to awaken
the conscience of the English nation to the need of general education for the
poor. The British and Foreign and the National Societies afforded a
substitute, though a poor one, for national education in the days before
England was willing to pay for general education, and they became the
avenues through which such appropriations as the government did make
were distributed. In 1833 the grant of £20,000, constituting the first
government aid to elementary education, was equally divided between the
two societies (see p. 388), and this method of administration was continued
as the annual grant was gradually increased, until the system of public
education was established. Likewise, in 1839, £10,000 for normal
instruction was voted to the societies, and was used by
Training colleges.
the British and Foreign for its Borough Road Training
College, and by the National for St. Mark’s Training College. These were
followed by several other training institutions, established by each society
through government aid. In 1870, when the ‘board,’ or public elementary,
schools were at length founded, the schools of the British
British and Foreign
schools absorbed, and Foreign Society, with their nonsectarian instruction,
but National a fused naturally with them; but the institutions of the
system by National Society, though transferred to school boards in a
themselves.
few cases, have generally come to constitute by
themselves a national system on a voluntary basis.

Results of the Monitorial System in the United States.—In the United
States the monitorial system was introduced into New York City in 1806.
The ‘Society for the Establishment of a Free School,’ after investigating the
best methods in other cities and countries, decided to try the system of
Lancaster (see p. 260). The method was likewise
Adoption by New
York and other introduced into the charity schools of Philadelphia (see p.
cities. 261). The monitorial system then spread rapidly through
New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and other States. It is almost impossible to trace the exact extent of this
organization in the United States, but before long it seems to have affected
nearly all cities of any size as far south as Augusta (Georgia), and west as
far as Cincinnati. There are still traces of its influence throughout this
region,—in Hartford, New Haven, Albany, Washington, and Baltimore, as
well as in the places already mentioned (Figs. 27, 28, and 29). In 1818
Lancaster himself was invited to America, and assisted in the monitorial
schools of New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. A dozen years later the
system began to be introduced generally into the high
Introduced into
high schools and schools and academies. Through the efforts of Dr. John
academies. Griscom, who had been greatly pleased with the
monitorial high school of Dr. Pillans in Edinburgh, a
similar institution was established in New York City in 1825, and the plan
was soon adopted by a number of high schools in New York and
neighboring states. Likewise, the state systems of academies in Maryland
and in Indiana, which became high schools after the Civil War, were
organized on this basis. For two decades the monitorial remained the
prevailing method in secondary education. Training schools for teachers on
the Lancasterian basis also became common.

In fact, the monitorial system was destined to perform a great service for
American education. At the time of its introduction, public and free schools
were generally lacking, outside of New England, and the
Increased school
facilities facilities that existed were meager and available during
but a small portion of the year. In all parts of the country
illiteracy was almost universal among children of the poor. This want of
school opportunities was rendered more serious by the rapid growth of
American cities. ‘Free school societies,’ like that in New York City, formed
to relieve the situation, came to regard the system of Lancaster, because of

its comparative inexpensiveness, as a godsend for their purpose. And when
the people generally awoke to the crying need of public education,
legislators also found monitorial schools the cheapest way out of the
difficulty, and the provision made for these schools gradually opened the
road to the ever increasing expenditures and taxation that had to come
before satisfactory schools could be established. Moreover, the Lancasterian
schools were not only economical, but most effective, when the educational
conditions of the times are taken into consideration. Even in the cities, the
one-room and one-teacher school was the prevailing type, and grading was
practically unknown. The whole organization and
and improved
organization and administration were shiftless and uneconomical, and a
methods. great improvement was brought about by the carefully
planned and detailed methods of Lancaster. The schools
were made over through his definite mechanics of instruction, centralized
management, well-trained teachers, improved apparatus, discipline,
hygiene, and other features.

Fig. 27.—A monitorial school, with three hundred pupils and
but one teacher.

Fig. 28.—Pupils reciting to monitors.

Fig. 29.—Monitor inspecting slates.

But while the monitorial methods met a great educational emergency in the
United States, they were clearly mechanical, inelastic, and without
psychological foundation. Naturally their sway could not
Disappeared when
educational last long, and as enlarged material resources enabled the
sentiment people to make greater appropriations for education, the
improved. obvious defects of the monitorial system became more
fully appreciated and brought about its abandonment.
Before the middle of the century its work in America was ended, and it gave

way to the more psychological conceptions of Pestalozzi and to those
afterward formulated by Froebel and Herbart.

The ‘Infant Schools’ in France.—Another form of philanthropic education
that came to be very influential during the nineteenth century and has
eventually been merged in several national systems is that of the so-called
‘infant schools.’ The first recorded instance of these institutions occurred
late in the eighteenth century through the attempt of a young Lutheran
pastor named Oberlin to give an informal training to the
Beginning with
Oberlin; small children in all the villages of his rural charge in
northeastern France. This type of training was copied in
Paris as early as 1801, but did not amount to much until
development in
Paris; its revival through the influence of a similar development
in England a quarter of a century later. It then rapidly
expanded, and in 1833 was adopted as part of the French
part of national
system. national system of education. In 1847 a normal school
was founded to prepare directresses and inspectors for
these institutions, and in 1881 they became known as ‘maternal schools,’
and the present type of curriculum was adopted. Besides reading and
writing, these schools have always included informal exercises in the
mother tongue, drawing, knowledge of common things, the elements of
geography and natural history, manual and physical exercises, and singing.

The ‘Infant Schools’ in England.—Quite independently, though over a
generation later than Oberlin, Robert Owen opened his
Owen at New
Lanark; ‘infant school’ in 1816 at New Lanark, Scotland. He was
a philanthropic cotton-spinner, and wished to give the
young children of his operatives a careful moral, physical, and intellectual
training. From the age of three they were taught in this school for two or
three years whatever was useful and within their understanding, and this
instruction was combined with much singing, dancing, amusement, and out-
of-door exercise. They were not “annoyed with books,” but were taught
about nature and common objects through maps, models, paintings, and
familiar conversation, and their “curiosity was excited so as to ask
questions concerning them.” To afford this informal training, Owen secured
a “poor simple-hearted weaver, named James Buchanan, who at first could
scarcely read, write, or spell,” but who, by following the instructions of