The History Of Education - Ellwood P. Cubberley (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📗

and princes to compel feudal lords to stop warfare and plundering and to submit to law and order; [38] and they entertained royal personages and drew nobles, clergy, and gentry into their honorary membership, thus serving as an important agency in breaking down the social-class exclusiveness of the Middle Ages. In these guilds, which were self-governing bodies debating questions and deciding policies and actions, much elementary political training was given their members which proved of large importance at a later time.

 

In the same way the craft guilds rendered a large educational service to the small merchant and worker, as they provided the technical and social education of such during the later period of the Middle Ages and in early modern times, and protected their members from oppression in an age when oppression was the rule. With the revival of trade and industry craft guilds arose all over western Europe. One of the first of these was the candle-makers’ guild, organized at Paris in 1061. Soon after we find large numbers of guilds—masons, shoemakers, harness-makers, bakers, smiths, wool-combers, tanners, saddlers, spurriers, weavers, goldsmiths, pewterers, carpenters, leather-workers, cloth-workers, pinners, fishmongers, butchers, barbers—all organized on much the same plan. These were the workingmen’s fraternities or labor unions of mediaeval Europe.

Each trade or craft became organized as a city guild, composed of the “masters,” “journeymen” (paid workmen), and “apprentices.” The great mediaeval document, a charter of rights guaranteeing protection, was usually obtained. The guild for each trade laid down rules for the number and training of apprentices, [39] the conditions under which a “journeyman” could become a “master,” [40] rules for conducting the trade, standards to be maintained in workmanship, prices to be charged, and dues and obligations of members (R. 97). They supervised work in their craft, cared for the sick, buried the dead, and looked after the widows and orphans. Often they provided one or more priests of their own to minister to the families of their craft, and gradually the custom arose of having the priest also teach something of the rudiments of religion and learning to the children of the members. In time money and lands were set aside or left for such purposes, and a form of chantry school, which later evolved into a regular school, often with instruction in higher studies added, was created for the children of members [41] of the guild (R. 98).

 

APPRENTICESHIP EDUCATION. For centuries after the revival of trade and industry all manufacturing was on a small scale, and in the home-industry stage. There was, of course, no machinery, and only the simple tools known from ancient times were used. In a first-floor room at the back, master, journeymen, and apprentices working together made the articles which were sold by the master or the master’s wife and daughter in the room in front.

The manufacturer and merchant were one. Apprentices were bound to a master for a term of years (R. 99), often paying for the training and education to be received, and the master boarded and lodged both the apprentices and the paid workmen in the family rooms above the shop and store.

 

The form of apprenticeship education and training which thus developed, from an educational point of view, forms for us the important feature of the history of these craft guilds. With the subdivision of labor and the development of new trades the craft-guild idea was extended to the new occupations, and a steady stream of rural labor flowing to the towns was absorbed by them and taught the elements of social usages, self-government, and the mastery of a trade. Throughout all the long period up to the nineteenth century this apprenticeship education in a trade and in self-government constituted almost the entire formal education the worker with his hands received. The sons of the barbarian invaders, as well as their knightly brothers, at last were busy learning the great lessons of industry, co�peration, and personal loyalty. Here begins, for western Europe, “the nobility of labor—the long pedigree of toil.” So well in fact did this apprentice system of training and education meet the needs of the time that it persisted, as was said above, well into the nineteenth century (Rs. 200, 201, 242, 243), being displaced only by modern power machinery and systematized factory methods. During the later Middle Ages and in modern times it rendered an important educational service; in the later nineteenth century it became such an obstacle to educational and industrial progress that it has had to be supplemented or replaced by systematic vocational education.

 

INFLUENCE OF THESE NEW MOVEMENTS. We thus see, by the end of the twelfth century, a number of new influences in western Europe which point to an intellectual awakening and to the rise of a new educated class, separate from the monks and clergy on the one hand or the nobility on the other, and to the awakening of Europe to a new attitude toward life. Saracen learning, filtering across from Spain, had added materially to the knowledge Europe previously had, and had stimulated new intellectual interests. Scholasticism had begun its great work of reorganizing and systematizing theology, which was destined to free philosophy, hitherto regarded as a dangerous foe or a suspected ally, from theology and to remake entirely the teaching of the subject. Civil and canon law had been created as wholly new professional subjects, and the beginnings of the teaching of medicine had been made. Instead of the old Seven Liberal Arts and a very limited course of professional study for the clerical office being the entire curriculum, and Theology the one professional subject, we now find, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of new and important professional subjects of large future significance—subjects destined to break the monopoly of theological study and put an end to logistic hair-splitting. The next step in the history of education came in the development of institutions where thinking and teaching could be carried on free from civil or ecclesiastical control, with the consequent rise of an independent learned class in western Europe. This came with the rise of the universities, to which we next turn, and out of which in time arose the future independent scholarship of Europe, America, and the world in general.

 

We also discover a series of new movements, connected with the Crusades, the rise of cities, and the revival of trade and industry, all of which clearly mark the close of the dark period of the Middle Ages. We note, too, the evolution of new social classes—a new Estate—destined in time to eclipse in importance both priest and noble and to become for long the ruling classes of the modern world. We also note the beginnings of an important independent system of education for the hand-workers which sufficed until the days of steam, machinery, and the evolution of the factory system. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were turning-points of great significance in the history of our western civilization, and with the opening of the wonderful thirteenth century the western world is well headed toward a new life and modern ways of thinking.

 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

 

1. Why is it that a strong religious control is never favorable to originality in thinking?

 

2. Show how the work of the Nestorian Christians for the Mohammedan faith was another example of the Hellenization of the ancient world.

 

3. Would it be possible for any people anywhere in the world today to make such advances as were made at Bagdad, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, without such work permanently influencing the course of civilization and learning everywhere? To what is the difference due?

 

4. What were the chief obstacles to Europe adopting at once the learning from Mohammedan Spain, instead of waiting centuries to discover this learning independently? 5. Why did Aristotle’s work seem of much greater value to the mediaeval scholar than the Moslem science? What are the relative values to-day?

 

6. Why should the light literature of Spain be spoken of as a gay contagion? Did this Christian attitude toward fiction and poetry continue long?

 

7. In what ways was the Sic et Non of Abelard a complete break with mediaeval traditions?

 

8. How did the fact that Dialectic (Logic) now became the great subject of study in itself denote a marked intellectual advance? What was the significance of the prominence of this study for the future of thinking?

 

9. What was the effect on inquiry and individual thinking of the method of presentation used by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica?

 

10. How do you explain the all-absorbing interest in scholasticism during the greater part of a century?

 

11. State the significance, for the future, of the revival of the study of Roman law: (a) intellectually; (b) in shaping future civilization.

 

12. How do you explain the Christian attitude toward disease, and the scientific treatment of it? Has that attitude entirely passed away?

Illustrate.

 

13. Why was it such a good thing for the future of civilization in England and France that so many of its nobility perished in the Crusades?

 

14. State a number of ways in which the Crusade movements had a beneficial effect on western Europe.

 

15. Show how the revival of commerce was an educative and a civilizing influence of large importance. 16. Would the organization of commerce and banking, and the establishment of the sanctity of obligations in a country, be one important measure of the civilization to which that country had attained? Illustrate.

 

17. Show how the development of industry and commerce and the accumulation of wealth tend to promote order and security, and to extend educational advantages.

 

18. Contrast a mediaeval guild and a modern labor union. A guild and a modern fraternal and benevolent society.

 

19. Why did apprenticeship education continue so long with so little change, when it is now so rapidly being superseded?

 

20. Does the rise of a new Estate in society indicate a period of slow or rapid change? Why is such an evolution of importance for education and civilization?

 

SELECTED READINGS

 

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

 

85. Draper: The Moslem Civilization in Spain.

86. Draper: Learning among the Moslems in Spain.

87. Norton: Works of Aristotle known by 1300.

88. Averro�s: On Aristotle’s Greatness.

89. Roger Bacon: How Aristotle was received at Oxford.

90. Statutes: How Aristotle was received at Paris.

(a) Decree of Church Council, 1210 A.D.

(b) Statutes of Papal Legate, 1215 A.D.

(c) Statutes of Pope Gregory, 1231 A.D.

(d) Statutes of the Masters of Arts, 1254 A.D.

91. Cousin: Abelard’s Sic et Non.

(a) From the Introduction.

(b) Types of Questions raised for Debate.

92. Rashdall: The Great Work of the Schoolmen.

93. Justinian: Preface to the Justinian Code.

94. Giry and R�ville: The Early Mediaeval Town.

(a) To the Eleventh Century.

(b) By the Thirteenth Century.

95. Gross: An English Town Charter.

96. London: Oath of a New Freeman in a Mediaeval Town.

97. Riley: Ordinances of the White-Tawyers’ Guild.

98. State Report: School of the Guild of Saint Nicholas.

99. England, 1396: A Mediaeval Indenture of Apprenticeship.

 

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

 

1. Contrast the state of civilization in Spain and the rest of Europe about 1100 (85, 86).

 

2. Considering Aristotle’s great intellectual worth (88) and work (87), is it to be wondered that the mediaevals regarded him with such reverence?

 

3. Do we today accept Abelard’s premise (91 a) as to attaining wisdom?

Would his questions (91 b) excite much interest to-day?

 

4. How do you explain the change in attitude toward him shown by the successive statutes enacted (90 a-d) for the University of Paris?

 

5. Would the extract from Roger Bacon (89) lead you to think