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

classics, edited editions of the classical authors, wrote two treatises of importance on education, [9] and in two other books [10] ridiculed those who mistook the form for the spirit of the ancient learning. His Latin Greek edition of the New Testament definitely fixed the place of the New Testament in the humanistic schools.

 

In spite of the opposition of monks and scholastics in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in the face of the coming religious turmoil in the days of Henry VIII, the new learning made steady progress in the universities, [11] with the court, and among the scholars and statesmen of the time. With the coming of Elizabeth to the throne, [12] in 1558, the court, from the Queen down, was imbued with the spirit of the new learning (R. 139). Elizabeth appointed new chancellors for the two universities, and these institutions were soon transformed from places for the training of mediaeval scholars and theologians into places for the production of a “due supply of fit persons to serve God in Church and State.” As Sir Thomas Elyot so well expressed it, in his The Governour (1544)—a book on the education of rulers for a State, and which was permeated by the new spirit—“the new political order requires qualified instruments for its administration, and a trained governing class must henceforth take the place of the privileged caste and the clerk [cleric] education under the mediaeval disciplines.”

 

COLET AND SAINT PAUL’S SCHOOL. The first real establishment of the new learning in England came through the secondary schools, and through the refounding of the cathedral school of Saint Paul’s, in London, by the humanist John Colet, in 1510. Colet had become Dean of Saint Paul’s Church, and Erasmus urged him to embrace the opportunity to reconstruct the school along humanistic lines. This he did, endowing it with all his wealth, and in a series of carefully drawn-up Statutes (R. 138), which were widely copied in subsequent foundations, Colet laid special emphasis on the school giving training in the new learning and in Christian discipline. Erasmus gave much of his time for years to finding teachers and writing textbooks for the school. William Lily (1468-1522), another early humanist recently returned from study in Italy, and the author of a widely known and much used textbook [13]—_Lily’s Latin Grammar_ (R. 140) —was made headmaster of the school.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 83. SAINT PAUL’S SCHOOL, LONDON]

 

The course of study was of the humanistic type already described, coupled with careful religious instruction. In place of the monkish Latin pure Latin and Greek were to be taught, and the best classical authors took the place of the old mediaeval disciplines. The school met with much opposition, was denounced as a temple of idolatry and heathenism by the men of the old schools, and even the Bishop of London tried twice to convict Colet of heresy and suppress the instruction. Notwithstanding this the school became famous for its work, not only in London but throughout England. From its desks came a long line of capable statesmen, learned clergy, brilliant scholars, and literary men.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 84. GIGGLESWICK GRAMMAR SCHOOL

One of the chief schools of Yorkshire, England, and dating back to 1499.

This building was erected in 1507-12 by a chantry priest named James Carr (Ker). Drawn from an old print. On the front of the building was a Latin tablet (shown in the drawing), now in the British Museum, which, translated, read: “Kindly mother of God, defend James Ker from ill. For priests and young clerks this house is made, in 1512. Jesus, have mercy on us. Old men and children praise the name of the Lord.”]

 

INFLUENCE ON OTHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. In a preceding chapter (p.

152) we mentioned the founding of many English grammar schools after 1200.

At the time Saint Paul’s School was refounded there were something like three hundred of these, of all classes, in England. They existed in connection with the old monasteries, cathedrals, collegiate churches, guilds, and charity foundations in connection with parish churches, while a few were due to private benevolence and had been founded independently of either Church or State. The Sevenoaks Grammar School, founded by the will of William Sevenoaks, in 1432 (R. 141), and for which he stated in his will that he desired as master “an honest man, sufficiently advanced and expert in the science of Grammar, B.A., by no means in holy orders,”

and the chantry grammar school founded by John Percyvall, in 1503 (R.

142), are examples of the parish type. The famous Winchester Public School, founded by Bishop William of Wykeham, in 1382, to emphasize grammar, religion, and manners, and to prepare seventy scholars for New College, at Oxford, [14] where they were to be trained as priests; and Eton College, founded by Henry VI, in 1440, to prepare students for King’s College, at Cambridge, are examples of the larger private foundations. A few, such as the grammar school at Sandwich (1579), owed their origin (R.

143) to the initiative of the city authorities. Most of these grammar schools were small, but a few were large and wealthy establishments.

 

These old foundations, with their mediaeval curriculum, after a time began to feel the influence of Colet’s school. Within a century, due to one influence or another, practically all had been remodeled after the new classical type set up by Colet. In the course of study given for Eton (R.

144), for 1560, we see the new learning fully established, and in the course of study for a small country grammar school, in 1635 (R. 145), we see how fully the new learning, with its emphasis on Latin as a living language, had by this time extended to even the smallest of the English grammar schools. The new foundations, after 1510, were almost entirely new-learning grammar schools, with large emphasis on grammar, good Latin and Greek, games and sports, and the religious spirit. One of the most conspicuous of these later foundations was Merchant Taylor’s School, [15]

founded in London in 1561, and of which Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), the author of two important books on educational theory, [16] was for long the headmaster. The first American Latin grammar school (Boston, 1635) was a direct descendant of these English influences and traditions.

 

[Illustration: PLATE 5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL

Established by the Holy Cross Guild of Stratford-on-Avon, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Grammar School was built in 1426, of wood, and at a cost of �10, 5_s_., 3-1/2_d_. The school was held on the upper floor, the lower being used as a guild-hall. Here Shakespeare went to school, and saw companies of strolling players in the hall below. The lower picture shows the grammar-school room after its “restoration,” in 1892.]

 

THE REACTION AGAINST MEDIAEVALISM. Having traced the introduction of the new learning by countries, it still remains to point out certain significant educational features of the movement which were common in all lands, and which profoundly modified subsequent educational practice. Both the purpose and the method of education were permanently changed.

 

Up to about the middle of the fourth Christian century the aim of both Greek and Roman education had been to prepare men to become good and useful citizens in the State. Then the Church gained control of education, and for a thousand years the chief object was to prepare for the world to come. Success and good citizenship in this world counted for little, religious devotion took the place of the old state patriotism, the salvation of souls took the place of the promotion of the social welfare, and the aim and end of life here was to attain everlasting bliss in the world to come. To be able to appease the dread Judge at the Day of Judgment, prayer, penance, and holy contemplation were the important things here below. It was pre�minently the age of the self-abasing monk, and this mental attitude dominated all thinking and learning.

 

The spirit behind the Revival of Learning was a protest against this mediaeval attitude, and the protest was vigorous and successful. The Revival of Learning was a clear break with mediaeval traditions and with mediaeval authority. It restored to the world the ideals of earlier education—self-culture, and preparation for usefulness and success in the world here. In Italy, France, Germany, and England the movement, too, met with the most thorough approval from modern men—merchants, court officials, and scholars who were ready to break with the mediaeval type of thinking. The court and other types of secondary schools now established were popular with the higher classes in society, and this aristocratic stamp the humanistic schools and courses have ever since retained. These schools restored to the world the practical education of the days of Cicero, and preparation for intelligent service in the Church, State, and the larger business life became one of their important purposes. Supported as they were by the ruling classes, the new schools were close to the most progressive forces in the national life of the different countries. They represented an unmistakable reaction against the world of the mediaeval monk and the Scholastic, and their early success was in large part because of this.

 

MODIFICATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CURRICULUM. The mediaeval curriculum, as we have seen (chap. VII), was based on instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts.

Grammar at first was the great subject, but later Dialectic became the master science. Knowledge was regarded as an organic whole, capable of being stated in a brief encyclopaedia, and each man could learn it all.

With the rise of university instruction some new knowledge was added, chiefly from Moslem sources, and the old knowledge was minutely re-ground.

With the revival of the ancient learning there came, within a little more than a century, an enormous increase in the world’s sum of knowledge, and the invention of printing came just in time to multiply and scatter this new knowledge throughout western Europe. To all the old subjects a new wealth of detail was added which made teaching encyclopaedias impossible.

New purposes in education now came to prevail, and the great mediaeval teaching curriculum was changed in content and in relative importance.

 

Of the subjects in the old Trivium, Dialectic or Logic, which Scholastics had raised to the place of first importance, was dethroned, and relegated to a minor position in university instruction. In its place Grammar, as Quintilian knew and used the term (R. 76) and as based on and including Literature, was raised once more to the place of first importance. Out of this, Literature—at first the classical and later the modern—later came as a separate study, as did also the study of History and Mythology. By the latter part of the sixteenth century technical Grammar had been separated from Literature, and made a more elementary subject, while Rhetoric had developed into a critical study of literary art. Of the subjects of the Quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy were each greatly expanded, as a result of the introduction of much new knowledge, and each was reduced to textbook form, while Algebra and Trigonometry were now organized as teaching subjects. Due to their newness and difficulty these subjects were taught chiefly in the universities. There they remained for a long time before being passed down to the secondary schools. Out of the very elemental instruction given in Geography and Astronomy were in time evolved all the biological and physical sciences, though this development belongs to a later chapter (XVII), and these new subjects did not reach the secondary schools until well into the nineteenth century. The last of the quadrivial subjects, Music, experienced a different history in different countries. In the Germanic countries it continued to receive its old emphasis, while in England and France much less was made of it. After the setting-in of Puritanism in England, when music was regarded with