THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
by
ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
Part 7 out of 18
teach and to preach the Calvinistic gospel were numbered by the hundreds.
[2]
Calvin's great educational work at Geneva has been well summarized by a
recent writer, [3] as follows:
The strenuous moral training of the Genevese was an essential part of
Calvin's work as an educator. All were trained to respect and obey
laws, based upon Scripture, but enacted and enforced by
representatives of the people, and without respect of persons. How
fully the training of children, not merely in sound learning and
doctrine, but also in manners, "good morals," and common sense was
carried out is pictured in the delightful human _Colloquies_ of
Calvin's old teacher, Corderius (once a teacher at the College of
Guyenne, p. 269), whom he twice established at Geneva....
Calvin's memorials to the Genevan magistrates, his drafts for civil
law and municipal administration, his correspondence with reformers
and statesmen, his epoch-making defense of interest taking, his
growing tendency toward civil, religious, and economic liberty, his
development of primary and university education, his intimate
knowledge of the dialect and ways of thought of the common people of
Geneva, and his broad understanding of European princes, diplomats,
and politics mark him out as a great political, economic, and
educational as well as a religious reformer, a constructive social
genius capable of reorganizing and moulding the whole life of a
people.
The world owes much to the constructive, statesman-like genius of Calvin
and those who followed him, and we in America probably most of all. Geneva
became a refuge for the persecuted Protestants from other lands, and
through such influences the ideas of Calvin spread to the Huguenots in
France, the Walloons of the Dutch and Belgian Netherlands, the Germans in
the Palatinate, the Presbyterians of Scotland, the Puritans in England,
and later to the American colonies.
[Illustration: FIG. 98. A FRENCH SCHOOL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
(From an old woodcut by Abraham Bosse, 1611-78)]
CALVINISM IN THE OTHER LANDS. The great educational work done by the
Calvinists in France, in the face of heavy persecution, deserves to be
ranked with that of the Lutherans in Germany in its importance. Had the
Calvinists had the same opportunity for free development the Lutherans
had, and especially their state support, there can be little doubt that
their work would have greatly exceeded the Lutherans in importance and
influence on the future history of mankind. Beginning with one church in
1538, they had 2150 churches by 1561, when the severe persecutions and
religious wars began.
True to the Calvinistic teaching of putting principles into practice, they
organized an extensive system of schools, extending from elementary
education for all, through secondary schools or colleges, up to eight
Huguenot universities. As a people they were thrifty and capable of making
great sacrifices to carry out their educational ideals. The education they
provided was not only religious but civil; not only intellectual but
moral, social, and economic. Education was for all, rich and poor alike.
Their synods made liberal appropriations for the universities, while
municipalities provided for colleges and elementary education. They
emphasized, in the lower schools, the study of the vernacular and
arithmetic, and in the colleges Greek and the New Testament. The long list
of famous teachers found in their universities reveals the character of
their instruction. Foster has well summarized the distinguishing
characteristics of Huguenot education in France, before they were driven
from the land, as follows: [4]
The significant characteristics of Huguenot education were: an
emphasis on the education of the laity; training for "the republic"
and "society" as well as for the Church; insistence upon virtue as
well as knowledge; the wide-spread demand for education, and a view of
it as essential to liberty of conscience; a comprehensive working
system of elementary, collegiate, and university training for all,
poor as well as rich; an astonishing familiarity with Scripture, even
among the lowest classes; utilization of representative church
organization for founding, supporting, and unifying education;
readiness to sacrifice for education, a spirit of carrying a thing
through at any cost; business-like supervision of money, and
systematic supervision of both professors and students; a notable
emphasis on vernacular, arithmetic, Greek, use of full texts, and
libraries; and finally a progressive spirit of inquiry and
investigation.
In the Palatinate (see map, Figure 88) some progress in founding churches
and schools was made, especially about Strassburg, and the universities of
Heidelberg and Marburg became the centers of Huguenot teaching. In the
Dutch Netherlands, and in that part of the Belgian Netherlands inhabited
by the Walloons, Calvinist ideas as to education dominated. The
universities of Leyden (f. 1575), Groningen (f. 1614), Amsterdam (f.
1630), and Utrecht (f. 1636) were Calvinistic, and closely in touch with
the Calvinists and Huguenots of German lands and France. Popular education
was looked after among these people as it was in Calvinistic France and
Geneva. The Church Synod of The Hague (1586) ordered the establishment of
schools in the cities, and in 1618 the Great Synod held at Dort (R. 176)
ordered that:
Schools in which the young shall be properly instructed in piety and
fundamentals of Christian doctrine shall be instituted not only in cities,
but also in towns and country places where heretofore none have existed.
The Christian magistracy shall be requested that honorable stipends be
provided for teachers, and that well-qualified persons may be employed and
enabled to devote themselves to that function; and especially that the
children of the poor may be gratuitously instructed by them and not be
excluded from the benefits of schools.
[Illustration: FIG. 99. A DUTCH VILLAGE SCHOOL
(After a painting by Adrian Ostade, dated 1662, now in the Louvre, at
Paris)]
Further provisions were made as to the certificating of schoolmasters, and
the pastors were made superintendents of the schools, to visit, examine,
encourage, advise, and report (R. 176). Provision for the free education
of the poor became common, and elementary education was made accessible to
all. The careful provision for education made by the province of Utrecht
(1590, 1612) (R. 178) was typical of Dutch activity. The province of
Drenthe ordered (1630) a school tax paid for all children over seven,
whether attending school or not. The province of Overyssel levied (1666) a
school tax for all children from eight to twelve years of age. The
province of Groningen constituted the pastors the attendance officers to
see that the children got to school. Amsterdam and many other Dutch cities
demanded an examination of all teachers before being licensed to teach. By
the middle of the seventeenth century a good system of schools seems to
have been provided generally [5] by the Dutch and the Belgian Walloons (R.
178). That the teaching of religion was the main function of the Dutch
elementary schools, as of all other vernacular schools of the time, is
seen from the official lists of the textbooks used (R. 178).
John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation (1560), who had spent
some time at Geneva and who was deeply impressed by the Calvinistic
religious-state found there, introduced the Calvinistic religious and
educational ideas into Scotland. His _Book of Discipline for the Scottish
Church_ (1560), framed closely on the Genevan model, contained a chapter
devoted to education in which he proposed:
That everie severall churche have a school-maister appointed, such a
one as is able at least to teach Grammar and the Latin tung, yf the
Town be of any reputation. Yf it be upaland ... then must either the
Reider or the Minister take cayre over the children ... to instruct
them in their first rudementie and especially in the catechisme.
[Illustration: FIG. 100. JOHN KNOX (1505?-72)]
The educational plan proposed by Knox would have called for a large
expenditure of money, and this the thrifty Scotch were not ready for. Knox
and his followers then proposed to endow the new schools from the old
church and monastic foundations, but the Scottish nobles hoped to share in
these, as had the English nobility under Henry VIII, and Knox's plan was
not approved. This delayed the establishment of a real national system of
education for Scotland until the nineteenth century. The new Church,
however, took over the superintendence of education in Scotland, and when
parish schools were finally established by decree of the Privy Council, in
1616, and by the legislation of 1633 and 1646 (R. 179), the Church was
given an important share in their organization and management. These
schools, while not always sufficient in number to meet the educational
needs, were well taught, and have deeply influenced the national
character.
4. _The Counter-Reformation of the Catholics_
THE JESUIT ORDER. The Protestant Revolt made but little headway in Italy,
Spain, Portugal, much of France, or southern Belgium (see map, p. 296).
Italy was scarcely disturbed at all, while in France, where of all these
countries the reform ideas had made greatest progress, nine tenths of the
people remained loyal to Rome. In a general way it may be stated that
those parts of western Europe which had once formed an integral part of
the old Roman Empire remained loyal to the Roman Church, while those which
had been the homes of the Germanic tribes revolted. Now it naturally
happened that the countries which remained loyal to the old Church
experienced none of the feelings of the necessity for education as a means
to personal salvation which the Lutherans and Calvinists felt. There, too,
the church system of education which had developed during the long Middle
Ages remained undisturbed and largely unchanged. The Church as an
institution, though, learned from the Protestants the value of education
as a means to larger ends, and soon set about using it. [6]
After the Church Council of Trent (1545-63), where definite church reform
measures were carried through (p. 303), the Catholics inaugurated what has
since been called a counter-reformation, in an effort to hold lands which
were still loyal and to win back lands which had been lost. Besides
reforming the practices and outward lives of the churchmen, and reforming
some church practices and methods, the Church inaugurated a campaign of
educational propaganda. In this last the chief reliance was upon a new and
a very useful organization officially known as the "Society of Jesus," but
more commonly called the "Jesuit Order." This had been founded, in 1534,
by a Spanish knight, pilgrim, man of large ideas, and scholar by the name
of Ignatius Loyola, and had been sanctioned as an Order of the Church by
Pope Paul III, in 1540. It was organized along strictly military lines,
all members being responsible to its General, and he in turn alone to the
Pope. The quiet life of the cloister was abandoned for a life of open
warfare under a military discipline. The Jesuit was to live in the world,
and all peculiarities of dress or rule which might prove an obstacle to
worldly success were suppressed. The purposes of the Order were to combat
heresy, to advance the interests of the Church, and to strengthen the
authority of the Papacy. Its motto was _Omnia ad Majorem Dei Gloriam_
(that is, All for the greater glory of God), and the means to be employed
by it to accomplish these ends were the pulpit, the confessional, the
mission, and the school. Of these the school was given the place of first
importance. Realizing clearly that the real cause of the Reformation had
been the ignorance, neglect, and vicious lives of so many monks and
priests and the extortion and neglect practiced by the Church, and that
the chief difficulty was in the higher places of authority, it became the
prime principle of the Order to live upright and industrious lives
themselves, and to try to reach and train those likely to be the future
leaders in Church and State. With the education of the masses of the
people the Order was not concerned. [7] Our interest lies only with the
educational work of this Order, a work in which it was remarkably
successful and through which it exercised a very large influence.
[Illustration: FIG. 101. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (1491-1556)]
GREAT SUCCESS OF THE ORDER. The service of the Order to the Church in
combating Protestant heresies was very marked. Beginning in a small way,
the Order, by 1600, had established two hundred colleges (Latin secondary
schools), universities, and training seminaries; by 1640, 372; by 1706
(150 years after the death of its founder), 769; and by 1756, 728. In
1773, when the Order was for a time abolished, [8] after it had been
driven out of a number of European countries because of the unscrupulous
methods it adopted and the continual application of its doctrine that the
end justifies the means, the Order had 22,589 members, about half of whom
were teachers. Its colleges (secondary schools) and universities were most
numerous and its work most energetically carried on in northern France,
Belgium, Holland, the German States, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Here
was the great battle line, and here the Jesuits deeply entrenched
themselves. In these portions of Europe alone there were, in 1750, 217
colleges, 55 seminaries, 24 houses for novitiates, and 160 missions. In
France alone there were 92 colleges. They did much, single-handed, to roll
back the tide of Protestantism which had advanced over half of western
Europe, and to hold other countries true to the ancient faith.
The colleges were usually large and well-supported institutions, with
dormitories, classrooms, dining-halls; and play-grounds. The usual number
of scholars in each was about 300, though some had an attendance of 600 to
800, and a few as high as 2000. At their period of maximum influence the
colleges and universities of the Order probably enrolled a total of
200,000 students. Their graduates were prominent in every scholarly and
governmental activity of the time. As far as possible the pupils were a
selected class to whom the Order offered free instruction. The children of
the nobility and gentry, and the brightest and most promising youths of
the different lands were drawn into their schools. The children of many
Protestants, also, were attracted by the high quality of the instruction
offered. There they were given the best secondary-school education of the
time, and received, at an impressionable age, the peculiar Jesuit stamp.
[9] Bacon gave his opinion as to the success of their instruction in the
following sentence: "As for the pedagogical part, the shortest rule would
be, Consult the schools of the Jesuits; for nothing better has been put in
practice." (_De Augmentis_, VI, 4.) [10]
SUCCESS OF THE JESUIT SCHOOLS. Displaying a genius for organization worthy
of Rome, Loyola and his followers absorbed the best educational ideas of
the time as to school organization and management and curriculum, and
incorporated these into their educational plan. Too practical to make many
changes, but with a keen eye for what was best, they accepted the best and
used it much as others had worked it out. From the municipal college of
Guyenne, the colleges of Calvin, and Sturm's organization at Strassburg,
they adopted the plan of class organization, with a teacher for each
class. From the Calvinists they obtained the idea of the careful
supervision of instruction, which was worked out in the Prefect of Studies
for their colleges. In their course of study they incorporated the
Ciceronian ideal of the humanistic learning, and as careful religious
instruction as was provided by any of the reformers. From the Italian
court schools they took the idea of physical training. The method of
instruction and classroom management which they worked out was detailed,
practical, and for their purposes excellent. The reasons for their
educational work gave them a clearly defined aim and purpose. The military
brotherhood type of organization, the lifetime of celibate service, and
the opportunity to sort the carefully selected members according to their
ability for service in the different lines of the Order gave them the
best-selected teaching force in Europe, and these men they trained for the
teaching service with a thoroughness unknown before and seldom equaled
since. Knowing why they were at work and what ends they should achieve,
intolerant of opposition, intensely practical in all their work, and
possessed of an indefatigable zeal in the accomplishment of their purpose,
they gave Europe in general and northern continental Europe in particular
a system of secondary schools and universities possessed of a high degree
of effectiveness, which, combined with religious warfare and persecution,
in time drove out or dwarfed all competing institutions in the countries
they were able to control.
That their educational system, viewed from a modern liberal-education
standpoint, equaled in effectiveness for liberal-education ends such
institutions as the court schools of Vittorino da Feltre, Battista da
Guarino, or other Italian humanistic educators of the Renaissance (p.
267); the French and Swiss colleges of Calvin (p. 331); Colet's school at
Saint Paul's (p. 275), and the better English grammar schools; or the
schools of the Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands (p. 271);
would hardly be contended for to-day. Such, though, was not their purpose.
To proselyte for the Church rather than to liberalize--from their point of
view there had been too much liberalizing already--was their ultimate aim,
and their educational work was organized to suppress rather than to awaken
more Protestant heresy. The work of this Order was so successful, and for
two centuries so dominated secondary and higher education in Europe, that
it will pay us to examine a little more closely their educational
organization to see more fully the reasons for their large success. In so
doing we will examine three points--their school organization, their
methods of instruction, and the training of their teachers.
JESUIT SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. Each college was presided over by a _Rector_,
who was in effect the president of the institution, and a _Prefect of
Studies_, who was the superintendent of instruction. Below these were the
_Professors_ or teachers, the _House Prefect_, the official disciplinarian
of the institution, known as the _Corrector_, the monitors, and the
students. There were two classes of students, interns and externs. Their
schools were divided into two courses. The _studia inferiora_, or lower
school, which covered the six years from ten to twelve years of age up to
sixteen to eighteen; and the _studia superiora_, which followed, and
included the higher college and university courses, with philosophy and
theology as the important subjects. For the whole, there was a very
carefully worked-out manual of instruction (R. 180) known as the _Ratio
Studiorum_. [11]
The boy entering a Jesuit college was supposed to have previously learned
how to read Latin. The first three years were given to learning Latin
grammar and a little Greek. In the fourth year Latin and Greek authors
were begun, and in the fifth and sixth years a rhetorical study of the
Latin authors was made. Latin was the language of the classroom and the
playground as well, the mother tongue being used only by permission. Greek
was studied through the medium of the Latin. The retention of Latin as the
language of all scholarly and political intercourse, and the cultivation
of the style and speech of Cicero as the standard of purity and elegance,
were the ends aimed at. Careful attention was given to the health and
sports of the pupils, and special regard was paid to moral and religious
training.
Following this lower school of six years came the so-called philosophical
course of three years (sometimes two). The study of the Latin classics and
rhetoric was continued, and dialectics (logic) and some metaphysics were
added. The nine years together covered about the same scope as Sturm's
school (R. 137) at Strassburg (p. 273), but was more formal in character
and partook more of the nature of the later formalized humanistic schools.
Slight variations were allowed in places, to meet particular local needs,
but this course of study remained practically unchanged until 1832, when
some history, geography, and elementary mathematics and science were added
to the lower schools, and advanced mathematics and science to the
philosophical course. In 1906 each Province of the Order was permitted to
change the _Ratio_ further, if necessary to adjust it better to local
needs. Above the philosophical course a course of four or six years in
philosophy and theology prepared for the higher work of the Order, the
four-year course for preaching and the six-year course for teaching.
JESUIT SCHOOL METHODS. The characteristic method of the schools was oral,
with a consequent closeness of contact of teacher and pupils. This
closeness of contact and sympathy was further retained by the system
whereby all punishment was given by the official Corrector of the
institution. Their method, like that of the modern German _Volkschule_,
was distinctly a teaching and not a questioning method. The teacher
planned and gave the instruction; the pupils received it. In the upper
classes the teacher explained the general meaning of the entire passage;
then the construction of each part; then gave the historical,
geographical, and archaeological information needed further to explain the
passage; then called attention to the rhetorical and poetical forms and
rules; then compared the style with that of other writers; and finally
drew the moral lesson. The memory was drilled; but little training of the
judgment or understanding was given. Thoroughness, memory drills, and the
disciplinary value of studies were foundation stones in the Jesuit's
educational theory. Repetition, they said, was the mother of memory. Each
day the work of the previous day was reviewed, and there were further
reviews at the end of each week, month, and year.
To retain the interest of the pupils amid such a load of memorizing
various school devices were resorted to, chief among which were prizes,
ranks, emulations, rivals, and public disputations. The system of rivals,
whereby each boy had an opponent constantly after him, as shown in Figure
102, was one of the peculiar features of their schools. While the schools
were said to have been made pleasant and attractive, the idea of the
absolute authority of the Church which they represented pervaded them and
repressed the development of that individuality which the court schools of
the Italian Renaissance, the schools of the northern humanists, and the
Calvinistic colleges had tried particularly to foster. This, however, is a
criticism made from a modern point of view. That the school represented
well the spirit of the times is indicated by their marked success as
teaching institutions.
[Illustration: FIG. 102. PLAN OF A JESUIT SCHOOLROOM
The pupils were arranged in equal numbers in opposite rows, known as
_decuriae_, and designated by the numbers. Each boy in each row had a
"rival" in the similarly numbered opposite row (one pair is designated by
dots), who rose whenever he was called on to recite, and who tried to
correct him in some error. A monitor for each group sat at _C_, and the
regular teacher at _B. A, D, E, i, o_, and _x_ represent various student
officials.]
TRAINING OF THE JESUIT TEACHER. The newest and the most distinguishing
feature of the Jesuit educational scheme, as well as the most important,
was the care with which they selected and the thoroughness with which they
trained their teachers. To begin with, every Jesuit was a picked man, and
of those who entered the Order only the best were selected for teaching.
Each entered the Order for life, was vowed to celibacy, poverty, chastity,
uprightness of life, and absolute obedience to the commands of the Order.
The six-year inferior course had to be completed, which required that the
boy be sixteen to eighteen years of age before he could take the
preliminary steps toward joining the Order. Then a two-year novitiate,
away from the world, followed. This was a trial of his real character, his
weak points were noted, and his will and determination tested. Many were
dismissed before the end of the novitiate. If retained and accepted, he
took the preliminary vows and entered the philosophical course of study.
On completing this he was from twenty-one to twenty-three years of age. He
was now assigned to teach boys in the inferior classes of some college,
and might remain there. If destined for higher work he taught in the
inferior classes for two or three years, and then entered the theological
course at some Jesuit university. This required four years for those
headed for the ministry, and six for those who were being trained for
professorships in the colleges. On completing this course the final vows
were taken, at an age of from twenty-nine to thirty-two. The training to-
day is still longer. To become a teacher in the inferior classes required
training until twenty-one at least, and for college (secondary) classes
training until at least twenty-nine. The training was in scholarship,
religion, theology, and an apprenticeship in teaching, and was superior to
that required for a teaching license in any Protestant country of Europe,
or in the Catholic Church itself outside of the Jesuit Order.
With such carefully selected and well-educated teachers, themselves models
of upright life in an age when priests and monks had been careless, it is
not surprising that they wielded an influence wholly out of proportion to
their numbers, and supplied Europe with its best secondary schools during
the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the loyal Catholic
countries they were virtually the first secondary schools outside of the
monasteries and churches, and the real introduction of humanism into
Spain, Portugal, and parts of France came with the establishment of the
Jesuit humanistic colleges. For their schools they wrote new school books
--the Protestant books, the most celebrated of which were those of
Erasmus, Melanchthon, Sturm, and Lily, were not possible of use--and for
a time they put new life into the humanistic type of education. Before the
eighteenth century, however, their secondary schools had become as formal
as had those in Protestant lands (R. 146), and their universities far more
narrow and intolerant.
The elements of strength and weakness in the Jesuit system of education
has been well summarized by Dabney, [12] in the following words:
The order of the Jesuits was anti-democratic, and was founded to
uphold authority, and to antagonize the right of private judgment.
With masterly skill they ruled the Catholic world for about two
centuries; and, in the beginning of their activity, performed services
of great value to mankind. For, although they aimed, in their system
of education, to fit pupils merely for so-called practical avocations,
and to avoid all subjects likely to stimulate them to independent
thought, it was nevertheless the best system which had then appeared.
In dropping the old scholastic methods, and teaching new and fresher
subjects, although with the intention of perverting them to their own
ends, they sowed, in fact, the germs of their own decay. In spite of
their wonderful organization, and their indefatigable industry as
courtiers in royal palaces, as professors in the universities, as
teachers in the schools, as preachers, as confessors, and as
missionaries, they were utterly unable to crush the spirit of doubt
and inquiry. During the first half century of their existence they
were intellectually in advance of their age; but after that they
gradually dropped behind it, and, instead of diffusing knowledge, saw
that the only hope of retaining their dominion was to oppose it with
all their might.
THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. As was stated on a preceding page,
the countries which remained loyal to the Church experienced none of the
Protestant feeling as to the necessity for universal education for
individual salvation. In such lands the church system of education which
had grown up during the Middle Ages remained undisturbed, and was expanded
but slowly with the passage of time. The Church, never having made general
provision for education, was not prepared for such work. Teachers were
scarce, there was no theory of education except the religious theory, and
few knew what to do or how to do it. Many churchmen, too, did not see the
need for doing anything. Nevertheless the Church, spurred on by the new
demands of a world fast becoming modern, and by the exhortations of the
official representatives of the people, [13] now began to make extra
efforts, in the large cathedral cities, to remedy the deficiency of more
than a thousand years. In Paris, for example, which was typical of other
French cities, the Church organized a regular system of elementary
schools, with teachers licensed by the Precentor of the cathedral of Notre
Dame and nominally under his supervision, in which instruction was offered
to children of the artisan and laboring classes, of both sexes, "in
reading, writing, reckoning, the rudiments of Latin Grammar, Catechism,
and singing." By 1675 these "Little Schools" in Paris came to contain
"upwards of 5000 pupils, taught by some 330 masters and mistresses." All
such schools, of course, remained under the immediate control of the
Church, and modern state systems of education in the Catholic States are
late nineteenth-century productions. In Spain, Portugal, Poland, and the
Balkan States, general state systems of education have not even as yet
been evolved.
The general effect of the Reformation, though, was to stimulate the Church
to greater activity in elementary, as well as in secondary and higher
education. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we find a large
number of decrees by church councils and exhortations by bishops urging
the extension of the existing church system of education, so as to supply
at least religious training to all the children of the faithful. As a
result a number of teaching orders were organized, the aim of which was to
assist the Church in providing elementary and religious education for the
children of the laboring and artisan classes in the cities.
TEACHING ORDERS ESTABLISHED. The teaching orders for elementary education,
founded before the eighteenth century, with the dates of their foundation,
were:
* 1535-The Order of Ursulines. (U.S., 1729.)
1592--The Congregation of Christian Doctrine.
* 1598--The Sisters of Notre Dame. (U.S., 1847.)
* 1610--The Visitation Nuns. (U.S., 1799.)
1621--Patres piarum scholarum (Piarists). First school opened in 1597;
authorized by the Pope, 1662.
1627--The Daughters of the Presentation.
* 1633--The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. (U.S., 1809.)
1637--The Port Royalists (Jansenists). (Suppressed in 1661.)
1643--The Sisters of Providence.
* 1650--The Sisters of Saint Joseph. Rule based on Jesuits. (U.S.,
19th C.)
1652--The Sisters of Mary of Saint Charles Borromeo.
1684--The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin.
* 1684--The Brothers of the Christian Schools. (U.S., 1845.)
* Have communities in the United States, the date being that of the
first one established. See _Cyclopedia of Education_, vol. v, p.
528.
All of these, except the Ursulines and the Piarists, were founded in
France, many of them originating in Paris. The first has long been
prominent in Italy, and is now found in all lands. The second was founded
by Father Cesar de Bus, at Cavaillon, Avignon, in southern France, and its
purpose was to teach the Catechism to the young. The catechetical schools
of this Order were prominent in southern France up to the time of the
French Revolution. The third was founded by the Blessed Peter Fourier
(1565-1640), in 1598, and played an important part in the education of
girls in France, particularly in Lorraine, where Calvinism had made much
headway. This noted Order offered free instruction to tradesmen's
daughters, not only in religion but in "that which concerns this present
life and its maintenance" as well. The girls were taught "reading,
writing, arithmetic, sewing, and divers manual arts, honorable and
peculiarly suitable for girls" of their station of life. At a time when
handwork had not been thought of for boys, the beginnings of such work
were here introduced for girls. In 1640 Fourier gave the sisterhood a
constitution and a rule, which were revised and perfected in 1694. In this
he laid down rules for the organization and management of schools, methods
of teaching the different branches, and provided for a rudimentary form of
class organization. The following extract from the Rule illustrates the
approach to class organization which he devised:
[Illustration: FIG. 103. AN URSULINE
Order founded, 1535]
The inspectress, or mistress of the class, shall endeavor, as far as it
possibly can be carried out, that all the pupils of the same mistress have
each the same book, in order to learn and read therein the same lesson; so
that, whilst one is reading hers in an audible and intelligible voice
before the mistress, all the others, following her and following this
lesson, in their books at the same time, may learn it sooner, more
readily, and more perfectly. [14] The Piarists were established in Italy,
the first school being opened in Rome, in 1597, by a Spanish priest who
had studied at Lerida, Valencia, and Alcala. Being struck by the lack of
educational opportunities for the poor, he opened a free school for their
instruction. By 1606 he had 900 pupils in his schools, and by 1613 he had
1200. In 1621 Pope Gregory XV gave his work definite recognition by
establishing it a teaching Order for elementary (reading, writing,
counting, religion) education, modeled on that of the Jesuits. The Order
did some work in Italy and Spain, but its chief services were in border
Catholic lands. In 1631 it began work in Moravia, in 1640 in Bohemia, in
1642 in Poland, and after 1648 in Austria and Hungary. The members wore a
habit much like that of the Jesuits, had a scheme of studies similar to
their _Ratio_, and were organized by provinces and were under discipline
as were the members of the older Order.
The Jansenists, founded by Saint Cyran, at Port Royal, conducted a very
interesting and progressive educational experiment, and their schools have
become known to history as the "Little Schools of Port Royal." The
congregation was a reaction against the work and methods of the Jesuits.
It included both elementary and secondary education, but never extended
itself, and probably never had more than sixty pupils and teachers. After
seventeen years of work it was suppressed through the opposition of the
Jesuits, and its members fled to the Netherlands. There they wrote those
books which have explained to succeeding generations what they attempted,
[15] and which have revealed what a modern type of educational experiment
they conducted. The progressive and modern nature of their teaching, in an
age of suspicion and intolerance, condemned them to extinction. Yet
despite the progressive nature of their instruction, the intense religious
atmosphere which they threw about all their work (R. 181) reveals the
dominant characteristic of most education for church ends at the time.
THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. The largest and most influential of
the teaching orders established for elementary education was the
"Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools," founded by Father La
Salle at Rouen, in 1684, and sanctioned by the King and Pope in 1724. As
early as 1679 La Salle had begun a school at Rheims, and in 1684 he
organized his disciples, prescribed a costume to be worn, and outlined the
work of the brotherhood (_R. 182_). The object was to provide free
elementary and religious instruction in the vernacular for the children of
the working classes, and to do for elementary education what the Jesuits
had done for secondary education La Salle's _Conduct of Schools_, first
published in 1720, was the _ratio studiorum_ of his order. His work marks
the real beginning of free primary instruction in the vernacular in
France. In addition to elementary schools, a few of what we should call
part-time continuation schools were organized for children engaged in
commerce and industry. Realizing better than the Jesuits the need for
well-trained rather than highly educated teachers for little children, and
unable to supply members to meet the outside calls for schools, La Salle
organized at Rheims, in 1685, what was probably the second normal school
for training teachers in the world. [16] Another was organized later at
Paris. In addition to a good education of the type of the time and
thorough grounding in religion, the student teachers learned to teach in
practice schools, under the direction of experienced teachers.
The pupils in La Salle's schools were graded into classes, and the class
method of instruction was introduced. [17] The curriculum was unusually
rich for a time when teaching methods and textbooks were but poorly
developed, the needs for literary education small, and when children could
not as yet be spared from work longer than the age of nine or ten.
Children learned first to read, write, and spell French, and to do simple
composition work in the vernacular. Those who mastered this easily were
taught the Latin Psalter in addition. Much prominence was given to
writing, the instruction being applied to the writing of bills, notes,
receipts, and the like. Much free questioning was allowed in arithmetic
and the Catechism, to insure perfect understanding of what was taught.
Religious training was made the most prominent feature of the school, as
was natural. A half-hour daily was given to the Catechism, mass was said
daily, the crucifix was always on the wall, and two or three pupils were
always to be found kneeling, telling their beads. The discipline, in
contradistinction to the customary practice of the time, was mild, though
all punishments were carefully prescribed by rule. [18] The rule of
silence in the school was rigidly enjoined, all speech was to be in a low
tone of voice, and a code of signals replaced speech for many things.
[Illustration: FIG. 104. A SCHOOL OF LA SALLE AT PARIS, 1688
A visit of James II and the Archbishop of Paris to the School (From a bas-
relief on the statue of La Salle, at Rouen)]
Though the Order met with much opposition from both church and civil
authorities, it made slow but steady headway. At the time of the death of
La Salle, in 1719, thirty-five years after its foundation, the Order had
one general normal school, four normal schools for training teachers,
three practice schools, thirty-three primary schools, and one continuation
school. The Order remained largely French, and at the time of its
suppression, in 1792, had schools in 121 communities in France and 6
elsewhere, about 1000 brothers, and approximately 30,000 children in its
schools. This was approximately 1 child in every 175 of school age of the
population of France at that time. While relatively small in numbers,
their schools represented the best attempt to provide elementary education
in any Catholic country before well into the nineteenth century. The
distribution of their schools throughout France, by 1792, is shown on the
map above. In 1803 the Order was reestablished, by 1838 it had schools in
282 communities, and in 1887, when La Salle was declared a Saint of the
Church, it had 1898 communities on four continents, 109 of which were in
the United States, and was teaching a total of approximately 300,000
primary children.
[Illustration: FIG. 105. THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS BY 1792
Map, showing the locations of their communities]
5. _General Results of the Reformation on Education_
DESTRUCTION AND CREATION OF SCHOOLS. Any such general overturning of the
established institutions and traditions of a thousand years as occurred at
the time of the Protestant Revolts, with the accompanying bitter hatreds
and religious strife, could not help but result in extensive destruction
of established institutions. Monasteries, churches, and schools alike
suffered, and it required time to replace them. Even though they had been
neglectful of their functions, inadequate in number, and unsuited to the
needs of a world fast becoming modern, they had nevertheless answered
partially the need of the times. In all the countries where revolts took
place these institutions suffered more or less, but in England probably
most of all. The old schools which were not destroyed were transformed
into Protestant schools, the grammar schools to train scholars and
leaders, and the parish schools into Protestant elementary schools to
teach reading and the Catechism, but the number of the latter, in all
Protestant lands, was very far short of the number needed to carry out the
Protestant religious theory. This, as we have seen, proposed to extend the
elements of an education to large and entirely new classes of people who
never before in the history of the world had had such advantages. Out of
the Protestant religious conception that all should be educated the
popular elementary school of modern times has been evolved. The evolution,
though, was slow, and long periods of time have been required for its
accomplishment.
In place of the schools destroyed, or the teachers driven out if no
destruction took place, the reformers made an earnest effort to create new
schools and supply teachers. This, though, required time, especially as
there was as yet in the world no body of vernacular teachers, no
institutions in which such could be trained, no theory as to education
except the religious, no supply of educated men or women from which to
draw, no theory of state support and control, and no source of taxation
from which to derive a steady flow of funds. Throughout the long Middle
Ages the Church had supplied gratuitous or nearly gratuitous instruction.
This it could do, to the limited number whom it taught, from the proceeds
of its age-old endowments and educational foundations. In the process of
transformation from a Catholic to a Protestant State, and especially
during the more than a century of turmoil and religious strife which
followed the rupture of the old relations, many of the old endowments were
lost or were diverted from their original purposes. As the Protestant
reformers were supported generally by the ruling princes, many of these
tried to remedy the deficiency by ordering schools established. The landed
nobility though, unused to providing education for their villein tenants
and serfs, were averse to supplying the deficiency by any form of general
taxation. Nor were the rising merchant classes in the cities any more
anxious to pay taxes to provide for artisans and servants what had for
ages been a gratuity or not furnished at all.
NO REAL DEMAND OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. The creation of a largely new type
of schools, and in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of large classes
of people who before had never shared in the advantages of education, in
consequence proved to be a work of centuries. The century of warfare which
followed the reformation movement more or less exhausted all Europe, while
the Thirty Years' War which formed its culmination left the German States,
where the largest early educational progress had been made, a ruin. In
consequence there was for long little money for school support, and
religious interest and church tithes had to be depended on almost entirely
for the establishment and support of schools. Out of the parish sextons or
clerks a supply of vernacular teachers had to be evolved, a system of
school organization and supervision worked out and added to the duties of
the minister, and the feeling of need for education awakened sufficiently
to make people willing to support schools. In consequence what Luther and
Calvin declared at the beginning of the sixteenth century to be a
necessity for the State and the common right of all, it took until well
into the nineteenth century actually to create and make a reality.
The great demand of the time, too, was not so much for the education of
the masses, however desirable or even necessary this might be from the
standpoint of Protestant religious theory, but for the training of leaders
for the new religious and social order which the Revival of Learning, the
rise of modern nationalities, and the Reformation movements had brought
into being. For this secondary schools for boys, largely Latin in type,
were demanded rather than elementary vernacular schools for both sexes. We
accordingly find the great creations of the period were secondary schools.
[Illustration: FIG. 106. TENDENCIES IN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE,
1500 to 1700]
LINES OF FUTURE DEVELOPMENT ESTABLISHED. Still more, certain lines of
future development now became clearly established. The drawing given here
will help to make this evident. It will be seen from this that not only
was the secondary school still the dominant type, though elementary
schools began for the first time to be considered as important also, but
that the secondary schools were wholly independent of the elementary
schools which now began to be created. The elementary schools were in the
vernacular and for the masses; the secondary schools were in the Latin
tongue and for the training of the scholarly leaders. Between these two
schools, so different in type and in clientele, there was little in
common. This difference was further emphasized with time. The elementary
schools later on added subjects of use to the common people, while the
secondary schools added subjects of use for scholarly preparation or for
university entrance. The secondary schools also frequently provided
preparatory schools for their particular classes of children. As a result,
all through Europe two school systems--an elementary-school system for the
masses, and a secondary-school system for the classes--exist to-day side
by side. We in America did not develop such a class school system, though
we started that way. This was because the conception of education we
finally developed was a product of a new democratic spirit, as will be
explained later on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the attention to careful religious instruction in the secondary
schools provided by the Lutherans, Calvinists, and English. What analogous
instruction do we provide in the American high schools? Is it as thorough
or as well done?
2. Compare the scope and ideals of the educational system provided by the
Calvinists with the same for the Lutherans and Anglicans.
3. Compare the characteristics of Calvinistic (Huguenot) education, as
summarized by Foster, with present-day state educational purposes.
4. Just what kind of a school system did Knox propose (1560) for Scotland?
5. Show how the educational program of the Jesuits reveals Ignatius Loyola
as a man of vision.
6. Viewed from the purposes the Order had in mind, was it warranted in
neglecting the education of the masses?
7. Does the success of the Order show the importance to society of finding
and educating the future leader? Can all men be trained for leadership?
8. What does the statement that the Jesuits were "too practical to make
many changes," but had "a keen eye for what was best" in the work of
others, indicate as to the nature of school administration and educational
progress?
9. Indicate the advantages which the Jesuits had in their teachers and
teaching-aim over us of to-day. How could we develop an aim as clearly
defined and potent as theirs? Could we select teachers with such care?
How?
10. Compare the religious and educational propaganda of the Jesuits with
the recent political propaganda of the Germans.
11. What is meant by the statement that the Jesuit teaching method, like
that of the modern German _Volksschule_, was a teaching and not a
questioning method?
12. Compare present American standards for teacher-training for elementary
and secondary teaching with those required by the Jesuits:--(_a_) as to
length of preparation; (_b_) as to nature and scope of preparation.
13. How do you explain the introduction of sewing into the elementary
vernacular Catholic schools for girls, so long before handiwork for boys
was thought of?
14. In schools so formally organized as those of La Salle, how do you
explain the great freedom allowed in questioning on arithmetic and the
Catechism?
15. Why should La Salle's work have been so opposed by both Church and
civil authorities? Do you consider that his Order ever made what would be
called rapid progress?
16. Why must the education of leaders always precede the education of the
masses?
17. Explain how European countries came naturally to have two largely
independent school systems--a secondary school for leaders and an
elementary school for the masses--whereas we have only one continuous
system.
18. Explain why modern state systems of education developed first in the
German States, and why England and the Catholic nations of Europe were so
long in developing state school systems.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
175. Woodward: Course of Study at the College of Geneva.
176. Synod of Dort: Scheme of Christian Education adopted.
177. Kilpatrick: Work of the Dutch in developing Schools.
178. Kilpatrick: Character of the Dutch Schools of 1650.
179. Statutes: The Scotch School Law of 1646.
180. Pachtler: The _Ratio Studiorum_ of the Jesuits.
181. Gerard: The Dominant Religious Purpose in the Education of French
Girls.
182. La Salle: Rules for the "Brothers of the Christian Schools."
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Was the College at Geneva (175) a true humanistic-revival school?
2. Just what did the Synod of Dort provide for (176) in the matter of
schools, school supervision, and ministerial duties?
3. Compare the work of the Dutch (177) and the Lutherans (159-163) in
creating schools.
4. Just what type of school is indicated by selection 178?
5. Just what did the Scotch law of 1646 provide for (179)?
6. Characterize the schools provided for by La Salle (182).
7. Compare the religious care at Port Royal (181) with that suggested by
Saint Jerome (R. 45).
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Baird, C. W. _History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France_.
Baird, C. W. _Huguenot Emigration to America_.
Grant, Jas. _History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland_.
Hughes, Thos. _Loyola, and the Educational System of the Jesuits_.
Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _The Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial
New York_.
Laurie, S. S. _History of Educational Opinion since the
Renaissance_.
Ravelet, A. _Blessed J. B. de la Salle_.
Schwickerath, R. _Jesuit Education; its History and Principles in the
Light of Modern Educational Problems_.
Woodward, W. H. _Education during the Renaissance_.
CHAPTER XV
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
III. THE REFORMATION AND AMERICAN EDUCATION
THE PROTESTANT SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA. Columbus had discovered the new
world just twenty-five years before Luther nailed his theses to the church
door at Wittenberg, and by the time the northern continent had been
roughly explored and was ready for settlement, Europe was in the midst of
a century of warfare in a vain attempt to extirpate the Protestant heresy.
By the time that the futility of fire and sword as means for religious
conversion had finally dawned upon Christian Europe and found expression
in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed the terrible Thirty Years'
War (p. 301), the first permanent settlements in a number of the American
colonies had been made. These settlements, and the beginnings of education
in America, are so closely tied up with the Protestant Revolts in Europe
that a chapter on the beginnings of American education belongs here as
still another phase of the educational results of the Protestant Revolts.
Practically all the early settlers in America came from among the peoples
and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith,
and many of them came to America to found new homes and establish their
churches in the wilderness, because here they could enjoy a religious
freedom impossible in their old home-lands. This was especially true of
the French Huguenots, many of whom, after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes [1] (1685), fled to America and settled along the coast of the
Carolinas; the Calvinistic Dutch and Walloons, who settled in and about
New Amsterdam; the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who settled in
New Jersey, and later extended along the Allegheny Mountain ridges into
all the southern colonies; the English Quakers about Philadelphia, who
came under the leadership of William Penn, and a few English Baptists and
Methodists in eastern Pennsylvania; the Swedish Lutherans, along the
Delaware; the German Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, Dunkers, and
Reformed-Church Germans, who settled in large numbers in the mountain
valleys of Pennsylvania; and the Calvinistic dissenters from the English
National Church, known as Puritans, who settled the New England colonies,
and who, more than any others, gave direction to the future development of
education in the American States. Very many of these early religious
groups came to America in little congregations, bringing their ministers
with them. Each set up, in the colony in which it settled, what were
virtually little religious republics, that through them they might the
better perpetuate the religious principles for which they had left the
land of their birth. Education of the young for membership in the Church,
and the perpetuation of a learned ministry for the congregations, from the
first elicited the serious attention of these pioneer settlers.
Englishmen who were adherents of the English national faith (Anglicans)
also settled in Virginia and the other southern colonies, and later in New
York and New Jersey, while Maryland was founded as the only Catholic
colony, in what is now the United States, by a group of persecuted English
Catholics who obtained a charter from Charles I, in 1632. These
settlements are shown on the map on the following page. As a result of
these settlements there was laid, during the early colonial period of
American history, the foundation of those type attitudes toward education
which subsequently so materially shaped the educational development of the
different American States during the early part of our national history.
THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND. Of all those who came to America during this
early period, the Calvinistic Puritans who settled the New England
colonies contributed most that was valuable to the future educational
development of America, and because of this will be considered first.
[Illustration: FIG. 107. MAP SHOWING THE RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA]
The original reformation in England, as was stated in chapters XII and
XIII, had been much more nominal than real. The English Bible and the
English Prayer-Book had been issued to the churches (R. 170), and the King
instead of the Pope had been declared by the Act of Supremacy (R. 153) to
be the head of the English National Church. The same priests, though, had
continued in the churches under the new regime, and the church service had
not greatly changed aside from its transformation from Latin into English.
Neither the Church as an organization nor its members experienced any
great religious reformation. Not all Englishmen, though, took the change
in allegiance so lightly (R. 183), and in consequence there came to be a
gradually increasing number who desired a more fundamental reform of the
English Church. By 1600 the demand for Church reform had become very
insistent, and the question of Church purification (whence the name
"Puritans") had become a burning question in England.
[Illustration: FIG. 108. HOMES OF THE PILGRIMS, AND THEIR ROUTE TO
AMERICA]
The English Puritans, moreover, were of two classes. One was a moderate
but influential "low-church" group within the "high" State Church,
possessed of no desire to separate Church and State, but earnestly
insistent on a simplification of the Church ceremonial, the elimination of
a number of the vestiges of the old Romish-Church ritual, and particularly
the introduction of more preaching into the service. The other class
constituted a much more radical group, and had become deeply imbued with
Calvinistic thinking. This group gradually came into open opposition to
any State Church, stood for the local independence of the different
churches or congregations, and desired the complete elimination of all
vestiges of the Romish faith from the church services. [2] They became
known as Independents, or Separatists, and formed the germs of the later
Congregational groups of early New England. Both Elizabeth (1558-1603) and
James I (1603-25) savagely persecuted this more radical group, and many of
their congregations were forced to flee from England to obtain personal
safety and to enjoy religious liberty (R. 184). One of these fugitive
congregations, from Scrooby, in north-central England, after living for
several years at Leyden, in Holland, finally set sail for America, landed
on Plymouth Rock, in 1620, and began the settlement of that "bleak and
stormy coast." Other congregations soon followed, it having been estimated
that twenty thousand English Puritans migrated [3] to the New England
wilderness before 1640. These represented a fairly well-to-do type of
middle-class Englishmen, practically all of whom had had good educational
advantages at home.
Settling along the coast in little groups or congregations, they at once
set up a combined civil and religious form of government, modeled in a way
after Calvin's City-State at Geneva, and which became known as a New
England town. [4] In time the southern portion of the coast of New England
was dotted with little self-governing settlements of those who had come to
America to obtain for themselves that religious freedom which had been
denied them at home. These settlements were loosely bound together in a
colony federation, in which each town was represented in a General Court,
or legislature. The extent of these settlements by 1660 is shown on the
map on the opposite page.
BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOLS IN NEW ENGLAND. Having come to America to secure
religious freedom, it was but natural that the perpetuation of their
particular faith by means of education should have been one of the first
matters to engage their attention, after the building of their homes and
the setting up of the civil government (R. 185). Being deeply imbued with
Calvinistic ideas as to government and religion, they desired to found
here a religious commonwealth, somewhat after the model of Geneva (p.
298), or Scotland (p. 335), or the Dutch provinces (p. 334), the corner-
stones of which should be religion and education.
[Illustration: FIG. 109. NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1660]
At first, English precedents were followed. Home instruction, which was
quite common in England among the Puritans, was naturally much employed to
teach the children to read the Bible and to train them to participate in
both the family and the congregational worship. After 1647, town
elementary schools under a master, and later the English "dame schools"
(chapter XVIII), were established to provide this rudimentary instruction.
The English apprentice system was also established (R. 201), and the
masters of apprentices gave similar instruction to boys entrusted to their
care. The town religious governments, under which all the little
congregations organized themselves, much as the little religious parishes
had been organized in old England, also began the voluntary establishment
of town grammar schools, as a few towns in England had done (R. 143)
before the Puritans migrated. The "Latin School" at Boston dates from
1635, and has had a continuous existence since that time. The grammar
school at Charlestown dates from 1636, that at Ipswich from the same year,
and the school at Salem from 1637. In 1639 Dorchester voted:
that there shall be a rent of 20 lb a year for ever imposed upon
Tomsons Island ... toward the mayntenance of a schoole in Dorchester.
This rent of 20 lb yearly to bee payd to such a schoole-master as
shall vndertake to teach english, latine, and other tongues, and also
writing. The said schoole-master to bee chosen from tyme to tyme p'r
the freemen.
Newbury, in 1639, voted "foure akers of upland" and "sixe akers of salt
marsh" to Anthony Somerby "for his encouragement to keepe schoole for one
yeare," and later levied a town rate of L24 for a "schoole to be kepte at
the meeting house." Cambridge also early established a Latin grammar
school "for the training up of Young Schollars, and fitting them [5] for
_Academicall Learning_" (R. 185).
The support for the town schools thus founded was derived from various
sources, such as the levying of tuition fees, the income from town lands
or fisheries set aside for the purpose, [6] voluntary contributions from
the people of the town, [7] a town tax, or a combination of two or more of
these methods. The founding of the "free (grammar) school" at Roxburie, in
1645, is representative (R. 188) of the early methods. There was no
uniform plan as yet, in either old or New England.
FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE. In addition to establishing Latin grammar
schools, a college was founded, in 1636, by the General Court
(legislature) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to perpetuate learning and
insure an educated ministry (R. 185) to the churches after "our present
ministers shall lie in the dust." This new college, located at Newtowne,
was modeled after Emmanuel College at Cambridge, an English Puritan
college in which many of the early New England colonists had studied, [8]
and in loving memory of which they rechristened Newtowne as Cambridge. In
1639 the college was christened Harvard College, after a graduate of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, by the name of John Harvard, who died in
Charlestown, a year after his arrival in the colony, and who left the
college his library of two hundred and sixty volumes and half his
property, about L850.
The instruction in the new college was a combination of the arts and
theological instruction given in a mediaeval university, though at Harvard
the President, Master Dunster (R. 185), did all the teaching. For the
first fifty years at Harvard this continued to be true, the attendance
during that time seldom exceeding twenty. The entrance requirements for
the college (R. 186 a) call for the completion of a typical English Latin
grammar-school education; the rules and precepts for the government of the
college (R. 186 b) reveal the deep religious motive; and the schedule of
studies (R. 186 c) and the requirements for degrees (R. 186 d) both show
that the instruction was true to the European type. In the charter for the
college, granted by the colonial legislature in 1650 (R. 187 a), we find
exemptions and conditions which remind one strongly of the older European
foundations. A century later Brown College, in Rhode Island, was granted
even more extensive exemptions (R. 187 b).
THE FIRST COLONIAL LEGISLATION: THE LAW OF 1642. We thus see manifested
early in New England the deep Puritan-Calvinistic zeal for learning as a
bulwark of Church and State. We also see the establishment in the
wilderness of New England of a typical English educational system--that
is, private instruction in reading and religion by the parents in the home
and by the masters of apprentices, and later by a town schoolmaster; the
Latin grammar school in the larger towns, to prepare boys for the college
of the colony; and an English-type college to prepare them for the
ministry. As in England, too, all was clearly subordinate to the Church.
Still further, as in England also, the system was voluntary, the deep
religious interest which had brought the congregations to America being
depended upon to insure for all the necessary education and religious
training.
It early became evident, though, that these voluntary efforts on the part
of the people and the towns would not be sufficient to insure that general
education which was required by the Puritan religious theory. Under the
hard pioneer conditions, and the suffering which ensued, many parents and
masters of apprentices evidently proved neglectful of their educational
duties. Accordingly the Church appealed to its servant, the State, as
represented in the colonial legislature (General Court) to assist it in
compelling parents and masters to observe their religious obligations. The
result was the famous Massachusetts Law of 1642 (R. 190), which directed
"the chosen men" (Selectmen; Councilmen) of each town to ascertain, from
time to time, if the parents and masters were attending to their
educational duties; if the children were being trained "in learning and
labor and other employments ... profitable to the Commonwealth"; and if
children were being taught "to read and understand the principles of
religion and the capital laws of the country," and empowered them to
impose fines on "those who refuse to render such accounts to them when
required." In 1645 the General Court further ordered that all youth
between ten and sixteen years of age should also receive instruction "in
ye exercise of arms, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes & arrows, &c."
[Illustration: PLATE 9. Two TABLETS ON THE WEST GATEWAY AT HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Reproducing colonial records relating to the founding of Harvard College.]
The Law of 1642 is remarkable in that, for the first time in the English-
speaking world, a legislative body representing the State ordered that all
children should be taught to read. The law shows clearly not only the
influence of the Reformation theory as to personal salvation and the
Calvinistic conception of the connection between learning and religion,
but also the influence of the English Poor-Law legislation which had
developed rapidly during the half-century immediately preceding the coming
of the Puritans to America (R. 173). On the foundations of the English
Poor Law of 1601 (R. 174) our New England settlers moulded the first
American law relating to education, adding to the principles there
established (p. 326) a distinct Calvinistic contribution to our new-world
life that, the authorities of the civil town should see that all children
were taught "to read and understand the principles of religion and the
capital laws of the country." This law the Selectmen, or the courts if
they failed to do so, were ordered to enforce, and the courts usually
looked after their duties in the matter (R. 192).
_The Law of 1647._ The Law of 1642, while ordering "the chosen men" of
each town to see that the education and training of children was not
neglected, and providing for fines on parents and masters who failed to
render accounts when required, did not, however, establish schools, or
direct the employment of schoolmasters. The provision of education, after
the English fashion, was still left with the homes. After a trial of five
years, the results of which were not satisfactory, the General Court
enacted another law by means of which it has been asserted that "the
Puritan government of Massachusetts rendered probably its greatest service
to the future."
After recounting in a preamble (R. 191) that it had in the past been "one
cheife proiect of y't ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge
of y'e Scriptures, ... by keeping y'm in an unknowne tongue," so now "by
pswading from y'e use of tongues," and "obscuring y'e true sence & meaning
of y'e originall" by "false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers," learning
was in danger of being "buried in y'e grave of o'r fath'rs in y'e church
and comonwealth"; the Court ordered:
1. That every town having fifty householders should at once appoint a
teacher of reading and writing, and provide for his wages in such
manner as the town might determine; and
2. That every town having one hundred householders must provide a
grammar school to fit youths for the university, under a penalty of
L5 (afterwards increased to L20) for failure to do so.
This law represents a distinct step in advance over the Law of 1642, and
for this there are no English precedents. It was not until the latter part
of the nineteenth century that England took such a step. The precedents
for the compulsory establishment of schools lie rather in the practices of
the different German States (p. 318), the actions of the Dutch synods (R.
176) and provinces (p. 335), the Acts of the Scottish parliament of 1633
and 1646 (p. 334; R. 179), and the general Calvinistic principle that
education was an important function of a religious State.
PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED. The State here, acting again as the servant of the
Church, enacted a law and fixed a tradition which prevailed and grew in
strength and effectiveness after State and Church had parted company. Not
only was a school system ordered established--elementary for all towns and
children, and secondary for youths in the larger towns--but, for the first
time among English-speaking people, there was an assertion of the right of
the State to require communities to establish and maintain schools, under
penalty if they refused to do so. It can be safely asserted, in the light
of later developments, that the two laws of 1642 and 1647 represent the
foundations upon which our American state public-school systems have been
built. Mr. Martin, the historian of the Massachusetts public-school
system, states the fundamental principles which underlay this legislation,
as follows: [9]
1. The universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of
the State.
2. The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the
parent.
3. The State has a right to enforce this obligation.
4. The State may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of
education, and the minimum amount.
5. Public money, raised by general tax, may be used to provide such
education as the State requires. The tax may be general, though the
school attendance is not.
6. Education higher than the rudiments may be supplied by the State.
Opportunity must be provided, at public expense, for youths who
wish to be fitted for the university.
"It is important to note here," adds Mr. Martin, "that the idea underlying
all this legislation is neither paternalistic nor socialistic. The child
is to be educated, not to advance his personal interests, but because the
State will suffer if he is not educated. The State does not provide
schools to relieve the parent, nor because it can educate better than the
parent can, but because it can thereby better enforce the obligation which
it imposes." To prevent a return to the former state of religious
ignorance it was important that education be provided. To assure this the
colonial legislature enacted a law requiring the maintenance and support
of schools by the towns. This law became the corner-stone of our American
state school systems.
Influence on other New England colonies. Connecticut Colony, in its Law of
1650 establishing a school system, combined the spirit of the
Massachusetts Law of 1642, though stated in different words (R. 193), and
the Law of 1647, stated word for word. New Haven Colony, in 1655, ordered
that children and apprentices should be taught to read, as had been done
in Massachusetts, in 1642, but on the union of New Haven and Connecticut
Colonies, in 1665, the Connecticut Code became the law for the united
colonies. In 1702 a college was founded (Yale) and finally located at New
Haven, to offer preparation for the ministry in the Connecticut colony, as
had been done earlier in Massachusetts, and Latin grammar schools were
founded in the Connecticut towns to prepare for the new college, as also
had been done earlier in Massachusetts. The rules and regulations for the
grammar school at New Haven (R. 189) reveal the purpose and describe the
instruction provided in one of the earliest and best of these.
[Illustration: FIG. 111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED]
Plymouth Colony, in 1658 and again in 1663, proposed to the towns that
they "sett vp" a schoolmaster "to traine vp children to reading and
writing" (R. 194 a). In 1672 the towns were asked to aid Harvard College
by gifts (R. 194 b). In 1673-74 the income from the Cape Cod fisheries was
set aside for the support of a (grammar) school (R. 194 c). Finally, in
1677, all towns having over fifty families and maintaining a grammar
school were ordered aided from the fishery proceeds (R. 194 d).
The Massachusetts laws also applied to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont,
as these were then a part of Massachusetts Colony. After New Hampshire
separated, in 1680, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 was virtually readopted
in 1719-21. In Maine and Vermont there were so few settlers, until near
the beginning of our national life, that the influence of the
Massachusetts legislation on these States was negligible until a later
period.
Only in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, of all the New England
colonies, did the Massachusetts legislation fail to exert a deep
influence. Settled as these two had been by refugees from New England, and
organized on a basis of hospitality to all who suffered from religious
oppression elsewhere, the religious stimulus to the founding of schools
naturally was lacking. As the religious basis for education was as yet the
only basis, the first development of schools in Rhode Island awaited the
humanitarian and economic influences which did not become operative until
early in the nineteenth century.
Outside of the New England colonies, the appeal to the State as the
servant of the Church was seldom made during the early colonial period,
the churches handling the educational problem in their own way. As a
result the beginnings of State oversight and control were left to New
England. In the central colonies a series of parochial-school systems came
to prevail, while in Episcopalian Virginia and the other colonies to the
south the no-business-of-the-State attitude assumed toward education by
the mother country was copied.
THE CHURCH SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK. New Netherland, as New York Colony was
called before the English occupation, was settled by the Dutch West India
Company, and some dozen villages about New York and up the Hudson had been
founded by the time it passed to the control of the English, in 1664. In
these the Dutch established typical home-land public parochial schools,
under the control of the Reformed Dutch Church. The schoolmaster was
usually the reader and precentor in the church as well (R. 195), and often
acted, as in Holland, as sexton besides. Girls attended on equal terms
with boys, but sat apart and recited in separate classes. The instruction
consisted of reading and writing Dutch, sometimes a little arithmetic, the
Dutch Catechism, the reading of a few religious books, and certain
prayers. The rules (1661) for a schoolmaster in New Amsterdam (R. 196),
and the contract with a Dutch schoolmaster in Flatbush (R. 195), dating
from 1682, reveal the type of schools and school conditions provided. All
except the children of the poor paid fees to the schoolmaster. [10] He was
licensed by the Dutch church authorities. As the Dutch had not come to
America because of persecution, and were in no way out of sympathy with
religious conditions in the home-land, the schools they developed here
were typical of the Dutch European parochial schools of the time (R. 178).
A _trivial_ (Latin) school was also established in New York, in 1652.
After the English occupation the English principle of private and church
control of education, with schooling on a tuition or a charitable basis,
came to prevail, and this continued up to the beginning of our national
period. [11] Of the English colonial schools of New York Draper has
written: [12]
All the English schools in the province from 1700 down to the time of
the Declaration of Independence were maintained by a great religious
society organized under the auspices of the Church of England--and, of
course, with the favor of the government--called "The Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." The law governing this
Society provided that no teacher should be employed until he had
proved "his affection for the present government" and his "conformity
to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England." Schools
maintained under such auspices were in no sense free schools. Indeed,
humiliating as it is, no student of history can fail to discern the
fact that the government of Great Britain, during its supremacy in
this territory, did nothing to facilitate the extension or promote the
efficiency of free elementary schools among the people.
THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS OF PENNSYLVANIA. Pennsylvania was settled by
Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Moravians,
Mennonites, and members of the German Reformed Church, all of whom came to
America to secure greater religious liberty and had been attracted to this
colony by the freedom of religious worship which Penn had provided for
there. All these were Protestant sects, all believed in the necessity of
learning to read the Bible as a means to personal salvation, and all made
efforts looking toward the establishment of schools as a part of their
church organization. Unlike New England, though, no sect was in a
majority; church control for each denomination was considered as most
satisfactory; and no appeal was made to the State to have it assist the
churches in the enforcement of their religious purposes. The clergymen
were usually the teachers in the parochial schools established, [13] while
private pay schools were opened in the villages and towns. These were
taught in English, German, or the Moravian tongue (Czech), according to
the original language of the different immigrants. The Quakers seem to
have taken particular interest in schools (R. 199), a Quaker school in
Philadelphia (R. 198) having been established the year the city was
founded. Girls were educated as well as boys, and the emphasis was placed
on reading, writing, counting, and religion, rather than upon any higher
form of training.
[Illustration: FIG. 112. AN OLD QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE AND SCHOOL AT
LAMPETER, PENNSYLVANIA
(From an old drawing)]
The result was the development in this colony of a policy of depending on
church and private effort, and the provision of education, aside from
certain rudimentary and religious instruction, was left largely for those
who could afford to pay for the privilege. Charitable education was
extended to but a few, for a short time, while, under the freedom allowed,
many communities made but indifferent provisions or suffered their schools
to lapse. Under the primitive conditions of the time the interest even in
religious education often declined almost to the vanishing point. So lax
in the matter of providing schooling had many communities become that the
second Provincial Assembly, sitting in Philadelphia, in 1683, passed an
ordinance requiring (R. 197) that all persons having children must cause
them to be taught to read and write, so that they might be able to read
the Scriptures by the time they were twelve years old, and also that all
children be taught some useful trade. A fine of L5 was to be assessed for
failure to comply with the law. So much in advance of English ideas as to
what was fitting and proper was this compulsory law that it was vetoed by
William and Mary, when submitted to their majesties for approval. Ten
years later it was reenacted by the Governor and Assembly of the colony,
but proved so difficult of enforcement that it was soon dropped, and the
chance of starting education in Pennsylvania somewhat after the New
England model was lost. The colony now settled down to a policy of non
state action, and this in time became so firmly established that the do-
as-you-please idea persisted in this State up to the establishment of the
first free state school system, in 1834.
MIXED CONDITIONS IN NEW JERSEY. In New Jersey, situated as it was near the
center of the different colonies, the early development of education there
was the product of a number of different influences. The Dutch crossed
from New Amsterdam, the English came from Connecticut and later from New
York, Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians came from the mother country,
Swedish Lutherans settled along the Delaware, and Quakers and German
Lutherans came over from Pennsylvania. The educational practice of the
colony or land from which each group of settlers came was reproduced in
the colony. After the English succeeded the Dutch in New Amsterdam (1664),
English methods and practice in education gradually came into control
throughout most of New Jersey, and as a result here, as in New York, but
little was accomplished in providing schools for other than a select few
until well after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Neither New
Jersey, New York, nor Pennsylvania may be said to have developed any
colonial educational policy aside from that of allowing private and
parochial effort to provide such schools as seemed desirable.
VIRGINIA AND THE SOUTHERN TYPE. Almost all the conditions attending the
settlement of Virginia were in contrast to those of the New England
colonies. The early settlers were from the same class of English yeomen
and country squires, but with the important difference that whereas the
New England settlers were Dissenters from the Church of England and had
come to America to obtain freedom in religious worship, the settlers in
Virginia were adherents of the National Church and had come to America for
gain. The marked differences in climate and possible crops led to the
large plantation type of settlement, instead of the compact little New
England town; the introduction of large numbers of "indentured white
servants," and later negro slaves, led to the development of classes in
society instead of to the New England type of democracy; and the lack of a
strong religious motive for education naturally led to the adoption of the
customary English practices instead of to the development of colonial
schools. The tutor in the home, education in small private pay schools, or
education in the mother country were the prevailing methods adopted among
the well-to-do planters, while the poorer classes were left with only such
advantages as apprenticeship training or charity schools might provide.
Throughout the entire colonial period Virginia remained most like the
mother country in spirit and practice, and stands among the colonies as
the clearest example of the English attitude toward school support and
control. As in the mother country, education was considered to be no
business of the State. Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and
the Carolinas followed the English attitude, much after the fashion of
Virginia.
Practically all the Virginia colonial legislation relating to education
refers either to William and Mary College (founded in 1693), or to the
education of orphans and the children of the poor. Both these interests,
as we have previously seen, were typically English. All the seventeenth-
century legislation relating to education is based on the English Poor-Law
legislation, [14] previously described (p. 325), and included the
compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, training in a
trade, the requirement that the public authorities must provide
opportunities for this type of education, and the use of both local and
colony funds for the purpose (R. 200 a), all, as the Statutes state,
"according to the aforesaid laudable custom in the Kingdom of England." It
was not until 1705 that Virginia reached the point, reached by
Massachusetts in 1642, of requiring that "the master of the [apprenticed]
orphan shall be obliged to teach him to read and write." In all the
Anglican colonies the apprenticing of the children of the poor (see R. 200
b for some interesting North Carolina records) was a characteristic
feature. During the entire colonial period the indifference of the mother
country to general education was steadily reflected in Virginia and in the
colonies which were essentially Anglican in religion, and followed the
English example.
TYPE PLANS REPRESENTED BY 1750. The seventeenth century thus witnessed the
transplanting of European ideas as to government, religion, and education
to the new American colonies, and by the eighteenth century we find three
clearly marked types of educational practice or conception as to
educational responsibility established on American soil.
The first was the strong Calvinistic conception of a religious State,
supporting a system of common vernacular schools, higher Latin schools,
and a college, for both religious and civic ends. This type dominated New
England, and is best represented by Massachusetts. From New England this
attitude was carried westward by the migrations of New England people, and
deeply influenced the educational development of all States to which the
New Englander went in any large numbers. This was the educational
contribution of Calvinism to America. [15] Out of it our state school
systems of to-day, by the separation of Church and State, have been
evolved.
The second was the parochial-school conception of the Dutch, Moravians,
Mennonites, German Lutherans, German Reformed Church, Quakers,
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics. This type is best represented by
Protestant Pennsylvania and Catholic Maryland. It stood for church control
of all educational efforts, resented state interference, was dominated
only by church purposes, and in time came to be a serious obstacle in the
way of rational state school organization and control.
The third type, into which the second type tended to fuse, conceived of
public education, aside from collegiate education, as intended chiefly for
orphans and the children of the poor, and as a charity which the State was
under little or no obligation to assist in supporting. All children of the
upper and middle classes in society attended private or church schools, or
were taught by tutors in their homes, and for such instruction paid a
proper tuition fee. Paupers and orphans, in limited numbers and for a
limited time, might be provided with some form of useful education at the
expense of either Church or State. This type is best represented by
Anglican Virginia, which typified well the _laissez-faire_ policy which
dominated England from the time of the Protestant Reformation until the
latter half of the nineteenth century.
These three types of attitude toward the provision of education became
fixed American types, and each deeply influenced subsequent American
educational development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.
DOMINANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE. The seventeenth century was essentially
a period of the transplanting, almost unchanged in form, of the
characteristic European institutions, manners, religious attitudes, and
forms of government to American shores. Each sect or nationality on
arriving set up in the new land the characteristic forms of church and
school and social observances known in the old home-land. Dutch, Germans,
English, Scotch, Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians--
reproduced in the American colonies the main type of schools existing at
the time of their migration in the mother land from which they came. They
were also dominated by the same deep religious purpose.
The dominance of this religious purpose in all instruction is well
illustrated by the great beginning-school book of the time, _The New
England Primer_. A digest of the contents of this, with a few pages
reproduced, is given in R. 202. This book, from which all children learned
to read, was used by Dissenters and Lutherans alike in the American
colonies. This book Ford well characterizes in the following words:
As one glances over what may truly be called "The Little Bible of New
England," and reads its stern lessons, the Puritan mood is caught with
absolute faithfulness. Here was no easy road to knowledge and salvation;
but with prose as bare of beauty as the whitewash of their churches, with
poetry as rough and stern as their storm-torn coast, with pictures as
crude and unfinished as their own glacial-smoothed boulders, between stiff
oak covers which symbolized the contents, the children were tutored,
until, from being unregenerate, and as Jonathan Edwards said, "young
vipers, and infinitely more hateful than vipers" to God, they attained
that happy state when, as expressed by Judge Sewell's child, they were
afraid that they "should goe to hell," and were "stirred up dreadfully to
seek God." God was made sterner and more cruel than any living judge, that
all might be brought to realize how slight a chance even the least erring
had of escaping eternal damnation.
One learned to read chiefly that one might be able to read the Catechism
and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was
scarcely any other purpose in the maintenance of elementary schools. In
the grammar schools and the colleges students were "instructed to consider
well the main end of life and studies." These institutions existed mainly
to insure a supply of learned ministers for service in Church and State.
Such studies as history, geography, science, music, drawing, secular
literature, and organized play were unknown. Children were constantly
surrounded, week days and Sundays, by the somber Calvinistic religious
atmosphere in New England, [16] and by the careful religious oversight of
the pastors and elders in the colonies where the parochial-school system
was the ruling plan for education. Schoolmasters were required to
"catechise their scholars in the principles of the Christian religion,"
and it was made "a chief part of the schoolmaster's religious care to
commend his scholars and his labors amongst them unto God by prayer
morning and evening, taking care that his scholars do reverently attend
during the same." Religious matter constituted the only reading matter,
outside the instruction in Latin in the grammar schools. The Catechism was
taught, and the Bible was read and expounded. Church attendance was
required, and grammar-school pupils were obliged to report each week on
the Sunday sermon. This insistence on the religious element was more
prominent in Calvinistic New England than in the colonies to the south,
but everywhere the religious purpose was dominant. The church parochial
and charity schools were essentially schools for instilling the church
practices and beliefs of the church maintaining them. This state of
affairs continued until well toward the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the conservative and radical groups in the English purification
movement with the conservative and radical groups, as typified by Erasmus
and Luther, at the time of the Reformation.
2. Show how, for each group, the schools established were merely homeland
foreign-type religious schools, with nothing distinctively American about
them.
3. Show why such copying of home-land types, even to the Latin grammar
school, was perfectly natural.
4. The provision of the Law of 1642 requiring instruction in "the capital
laws of the country" was new. How do you explain this addition to mother-
land practices?
5. Show why the Law of 1642 was Calvinistic rather than Anglican in its
origin.
6. Explain the meaning of the preamble to the Law of 1647.
7. Show how the Law of 1647 must go back for precedents to German, Dutch,
and Scotch sources.
8. Apply the six principles stated by Mr. Martin, as embodied in the
legislation of 1647, to modern state school practice, and show how we have
adopted each in our laws.
9. Show also that the Law of 1647, as well as modern state school laws, is
neither paternalistic nor socialistic in essential purpose.
10. Show that, though the mixture of religious sects in Pennsylvania made
colonial legislation difficult, still it would have been possible to have
enforced the Massachusetts Law of 1642, or the Pennsylvania laws of 1683
or 1693, in the colony. How do you explain the opposition and failure to
do so?
11. Show how the charity schools for the poor, and church missionary-
society schools, were the natural outcome of the English attitude toward
elementary education.
12. Which of the three type plans in the American colonies by 1750 most
influenced educational development in your State?
13. State the important contribution of Calvinism to our new-world life.
14. Explain the indifference of the Anglican Church to general education
during the whole of our colonial period.
15. Explain what is meant by "The Puritan Church applied to its servant,
the State," etc.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
183. Nichols: The Puritan Attitude.
184. Gov. Bradford: The Puritans leave England.
185. First Fruits: The Founding of Harvard College.
186. First Fruits: The First Rules for Harvard College.
(a) Entrance Requirements.
(b) Rules and Precepts.
(c) Time and Order of Studies.
(d) Requirements for Degrees.
187. College Charters: Extracts from, showing Privileges.
(a) Harvard College, 1650.
(b) Brown College, 1764.
188. Dillaway: Founding of the Free School at Roxburie.
189. Baird: Rules and Regulations for Hopkins Grammar School.
190. Statutes: The Massachusetts Law of 1642.
191. Statutes: The Massachusetts Law of 1647.
192. Court Records: Presentment of Topsfield for Violating the Law of
1642.
193. Statutes: The Connecticut Law of 1650.
194. Statutes: Plymouth Colony Legislation.
195. Flatbush: Contract with a Dutch Schoolmaster.
196. New Amsterdam: Rules for a Schoolmaster in.
197. Statutes: The Pennsylvania. Law of 1683.
198. Minutes of Council: The First School in Philadelphia.
199. Murray: Early Quaker Injunctions regarding Schools.
200. Statutes: Apprenticeship Laws in the Southern Colonies.
(a) Virginia Statutes.
(b) North Carolina Court Records.
201. Stiles: A New England Indenture of Apprenticeship.
202. The New England Primer: Description and Digest.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. What does the selection on The Puritan Attitude (183) reveal as to the
extent and depth of the Reformation in England?
2. Characterize the feelings and emotions and desires of the Puritans, as
expressed in the extract (184) from Governor Bradford's narrative.
3. Characterize the spirit behind the founding of Harvard College, as
expressed in the extract from New England's First Fruits (185).
4. What was the nature and purpose of the Harvard College instruction as
shown by the selection 186 a-d?
5. Point out the similarity between the exemptions granted to Harvard
College by the Legislature of the colony (187 a) and those granted to
mediaeval universities (103-105). Compare the privileges granted Brown
(187 b) and those contained in 104.
6. Compare the founding of the Free School at Roxbury (188) with the
founding of an English Grammar School (141-43).
7. What does the distribution of scholars at Roxbury (188) show as to the
character of the school?
8. State the essentials of the Massachusetts Law of 1642 (190).
9. Compare the Massachusetts Law of 1642 and the English Poor-Law of 1601
(190 with 174) as to fundamental principles involved in each.
10. What does the court citation of Topsfield (192) show?
11. What new principle is added (191) by the Law of 1647, and what does
this new law indicate as to needs in the colony for classical learning?
12. Show how the Connecticut Law of 1650 (193) was based on the
Massachusetts Law (190) of 1642.
13. What does the Plymouth Colony appeal for Harvard College (194 b)
indicate as to community of ideas in early New England?
14. What type of school was it intended to endow from the Cape Cod
fisheries (194 c)?
15. What is the difference between the Plymouth requirement as to grammar
schools (194 d) and the Massachusetts requirement (191)?
16. Compare the rules for the New Haven Grammar School (189) with those
for Colet's London School (138 a-c).
17. Characterize the early Dutch schools as shown by the rules for the
schoolmaster (196) and the Flatbush contract (195).
18. Just what type of education did the Quakers mean to provide for, as
shown in the extract from their Rules of Discipline (199)?
19. What kind of a school was the first one established in Philadelphia
(198)?
20. Compare the proposed Pennsylvania Law of 1683 (197) and the
Massachusetts Law of 1642 (190).
21. What conception of education is revealed by the Virginia
apprenticeship laws (200 a, 1-3) and the North Carolina court records (200
b, 1-3)?
22. Characterize the New England Indenture of Apprenticeship given in 201.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Boone, R. G. _Education in the United States_.
Brown, S. W. _The Secularization of American Education_.
Cheyney, Edw. P. _European Background of American Education_.
Dexter, E.G. _A History of Education in the United States_.
* Eggleston, Edw. _The Transit of Civilization_.
Fisk, C. R. "The English Parish and Education at the Beginning of
American Civilization"; in _School Review_, vol. 23, pp. 433-49.
(September, 1915.)
* Ford, P. L. _The New England Primer_.
* Heatwole, C. J. _A History of Education in Virginia_.
Jackson, G. L. _The Development of School Support in Colonial
Massachusetts_.
* Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _The Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial
New York_.
* Knight, E. W. _Public School Education in North Carolina_.
* Martin, Geo. H. _Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School
System_.
Seybolt, R. F. _Apprenticeship and Apprentice Education in Colonial
New York and New England_.
* Small, W. H. "The New England Grammar School"; in _School Review_,
vol. 10, pp. 513-31. (September, 1902.)
Small, W. H. _Early New England Schools_.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
NEW ATTITUDES AFTER THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. From the beginning of the
twelfth century onward, as we have already noted, there had been a slow
but gradual change in the character of human thinking, and a slow but
certain disintegration of the Mediaeval System, with its repressive
attitude toward all independent thinking. Many different influences and
movements had contributed to this change--the Moslem learning and
civilization in Spain, the recovery of the old legal and medical
knowledge, the revival of city life, the beginnings anew of commerce and
industry, the evolution of the universities, the rise of a small scholarly
class, the new consciousness of nationality, the evolution of the modern
languages, the beginnings of a small but important vernacular literature,
and the beginnings of travel and exploration following the Crusades--all
of which had tended to transform the mediaeval man and change his ways of
thinking. New objects of interest slowly came to the front, and new
standards of judgment gradually were applied. In consequence the mediaeval
man, with his feeling of personal insignificance and lack of self-
confidence, came to be replaced by a small but increasing number of men
who were conscious of their powers, possessed a new self-confidence, and
realized new possibilities of intellectual accomplishment.
The Revival of Learning, first in Italy and then elsewhere in western
Europe, was the natural consequence of this awakening of the modern
spirit, and in the careful work done by the humanistic scholars of the
Italian Renaissance in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring,
criticizing, and editing the texts, and in reconstructing the ancient life
and history, we see the beginnings of the modern scientific spirit. It was
this same critical, questioning spirit which, when applied later to
geographical knowledge, led to the discovery of America and the
circumnavigation of the globe; which, when applied to matters of Christian
faith, brought on the Protestant Revolts; which, when applied to the
problems of the universe, revealed the many wonderful fields of modern
science; and which, when applied to government, led to a questioning of
the divine right of kings and the rise of constitutional government. The
awakening of scientific inquiry and the scientific spirit, and the attempt
of a few thinkers to apply the new method to education, to which we now
turn, may be regarded as only another phase of the awakening of the modern
inquisitive spirit which found expression earlier in the rise of the
universities, the recovery and reconstruction of the ancient learning, the
awakening of geographical discovery and exploration, and the questioning
of the doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval Church.
INSUFFICIENCY OF ANCIENT SCIENCE. From the point of view of scientific
inquiry, all ancient learning possessed certain marked fundamental
defects. The Greeks had--their time and age in world-civilization
considered--made many notable scientific observations and speculations,
and had prepared the way for future advances. Thales (636?-546? B.C.),
Xenophanes (628?-520? B.C.), Anaximenes (557-504 B.C.), Pythagoras (570-
500 B.C.), Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.), Empedocles (460?-361? B.C.), and
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) had all made interesting speculations as to the
nature of matter, [1] Aristotle finally settling the question by naming
the world-elements as earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Hippocrates
(460-367? B.C.), as we have seen (p. 197), had observed the sick and had
recorded and organized his observations in such a manner [2] as to form
the foundations upon which the science of medicine could be established.
The Greek physician, Galen (130-200 A.D.) added to these observations, and
their combined work formed the basis upon which modern medical science has
slowly been built up.
On the other hand, some of what each wrote was mere speculation and error,
[3] and modern physicians were compelled to begin all over and along new
lines before any real progress in medicine could be made. Aristotle had
done a notable work in organizing and codifying Greek scientific
knowledge, as the list of his many scientific treatises in use in Europe
by 1300 (R. 87) will show, but his writings were the result of a mixture
of keen observation and brilliant speculation, contained many
inaccuracies, and in time, due to the reverence accorded him as an
authority by the mediaeval scholars and the church authorities, proved
serious obstacles to real scientific progress.
At Alexandria the most notable Greek scientific work had been done. Euclid
(323-283 B.C.) in geometry; Aristarchus (third century B.C.), who
explained the motion of the earth; Eratosthenes (270-196 B.C.), who
measured the size of the earth; Archimedes (270?-212 B.C.), a pupil of
Euclid's, who applied science in many ways and laid the foundations of
dynamics; Hipparchus (160-125 B.C.), the father of astronomy, who studied
the heavens and catalogued the stars, were among the more famous Greeks
who studied and taught there in the days when Alexandria had succeeded
Athens as the intellectual capital of the Greek world. Some remarkable
advances also were made in the study of human anatomy and medicine by two
Greeks, Herophilus (335-280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (d. 280 B.C.), who
apparently did much dissecting.
But even at Alexandria the promise of Greek science was unfulfilled.
Despite many notable speculations and scientific advances, the hopeful
beginnings did not come to any large fruitage, and the great contribution
made by the Greeks to world civilization was less along scientific lines
than along the lines of literature and philosophy. Their great strength
lay in the direction of philosophic speculation, and this tendency to
speculate, rather than to observe and test and measure and record, was the
fundamental weakness of all Greek science. The Greeks never advanced in
scientific work to the invention and perfection of instruments for the
standardization of their observations. As a result they passed on to the
mediaeval world an extensive "book science" and not a little keen
observation, of which the works of Aristotle and the Alexandrian
mathematicians and astronomers form the most conspicuous examples, but
little scientific knowledge of which the modern world has been able to
make much use. The "book science" of the Greeks, and especially that of
Aristotle, was highly prized for centuries, but in time, due to the many
inaccuracies, had to be discarded and done anew by modern scholars.
The Romans, as we have seen (chapter III), were essentially a practical
people, good at getting the work of the world done, but not much given to
theoretical discussion or scientific speculation. They were organizers,
governors, engineers, executives, and literary workers rather than
scientists. They executed many important undertakings of a practical
character, such as the building of roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public
buildings; organized government and commerce on a large scale; and have
left us a literature and a legal system of importance, but they
contributed little to the realm of pure science. The three great names in
science in all their history are Strabo the geographer (63 B.C.-24 A.D.);
Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), who did notable work as an observer in
natural history; and Galen (a Roman-Greek), in medicine. They, like the
Greeks, were pervaded by the same fear that their science might prove
useful, whereas they cultivated it largely as a mental exercise (R. 203).
THE CHRISTIAN REACTION AGAINST INQUIRY. The Christian attitude toward
inquiry was from the first inhospitable, and in time became exceedingly
intolerant. The tendency of the Western Church, it will be remembered (p.
94), was from the first to reject all Hellenic learning, and to depend
upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of
the third century the hostility to pagan schools and Hellenic learning had
become so pronounced that the _Apostolic Constitutions_ (R. 41) ordered
Christians to abstain from all heathen books, which could contain nothing
of value and only served "to subvert the faith of the unstable." In 401
A.D. the Council of Carthage forbade the clergy to read any heathen
author, and Greek learning now rapidly died out in the West. For a time it
was almost entirely lost. In consequence Greek science, then best
represented by Alexandrian learning, and which contained much that was of
great importance, was rejected along with other pagan learning. The, very
meager scientific knowledge that persisted into the Middle Ages in the
great mediaeval textbooks (p. 162), as we have seen in the study of the
Seven Liberal Arts (chapter VII), came to be regarded as useful only in
explaining passages of Scripture or in illustrating the ways of God toward
man. The one and only science worthy of study was Theology, to which all
other learning tended (see Figure 44, p. 154).
The history of Christianity throughout all the Dark Ages is a history of
the distrust of inquiry and reason, and the emphasis of blind emotional
faith. Mysticism, good and evil spirits, and the interpretation of natural
phenomena as manifestations of the Divine will from the first received
large emphasis. The worship of saints and relics, and the great
development of the sensuous and symbolic, changed the earlier religion
into a crude polytheism. During the long period of the Middle Ages the
miraculous flourished. The most extreme superstition pervaded all ranks of
society. Magic and prayers were employed to heal the sick, restore the
crippled, foretell the future, and punish the wicked. Sacred pools, the
royal touch, wonder-working images, and miracles through prayer stood in
the way of the development of medicine (R. 204). Disease was attributed to
satanic influence, and a regular schedule of prayers for cures was in use.
Sanitation was unknown. Plagues and pestilences were manifestations of
Divine wrath, and hysteria and insanity were possession by the devil to be
cast out by whipping and torture. One's future was determined by the
position of the heavenly bodies at the time of birth. Eclipses, meteors,
and comets were fearful portents of Divine displeasure:
Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid rage;
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change. [4]
The literature on magic was extensive. The most miraculous happenings were
recorded and believed. Trial by ordeal, following careful religious
formulae, was common before 1200, though prohibited shortly afterward by
papal decrees (1215, 1222). The insistence of the Church on "the willful,
devilish character of heresy," and the extension of heresy to cover almost
any form of honest doubt or independent inquiry, caused an intellectual
stagnation along lines of scientific investigation which was not relieved
for more than a thousand years. The many notable advances in physics,
chemistry, astronomy, and medicine made by Moslem scholars (chapter VIII)
were lost on Christian Europe, and had to be worked out again centuries
later by the scholars of the western world. Out of the astronomy of the
Arabs the Christians got only astrology; out of their chemistry they got
only alchemy. Both in time stood seriously in the way of real scientific
thinking and discovery.
GROWING TOLERANCE CHANGED BY THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS. After the rise of the
universities, the expansion of the minds of men which followed the
Crusades and the revival of trade and industry, the awakening which came
with the revival of the old learning and the rise of geographical
discovery, the church authorities assumed a broader and a more tolerant
attitude toward inquiry and reason than had been the case for hundreds of
years. It would have been surprising, with the large number of university-
trained men entering the service of the Church, had this not been the
case. By the middle of the fifteenth century it looked as though the
Renaissance spirit might extend into many new directions, and by 1500 the
world seemed on the eve of important progress in almost every line of
endeavor. As was pointed out earlier (p. 259), the Church was more
tolerant than it had been for centuries, and about the year 1500 was the
most stimulating time in the history of our civilization since the days of
Alexandria and ancient Rome.
In 1517 Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The
Church took alarm and attempted to crush him, and soon the greatest
contest since the conflict between paganism and Christianity was on.
Within half a century all northern lands had been lost to the ancient
Church (see map, p. 296); the first successful challenge of its authority
during its long history.
The effect of these religious revolts on the attitude of the Church toward
intellectual liberty was natural and marked. The tolerance of inquiry
recently extended was withdrawn, and an era of steadily increasing
intolerance set in which was not broken for more than a century. In an
effort to stop the further spread of the heresy, the Church Council of
Trent (1545-63) adopted stringent regulations against heretical teachings
(p. 303), while the sword and torch and imprisonment were resorted to to
stamp out opposition and win back the revolting lands. A century of
merciless warfare ensued, and the hatreds engendered by the long and
bitter struggle over religious differences put both Catholic and
Protestant Europe in no tolerant frame of mind toward inquiry or new
ideas. The Inquisition, a sort of universal mediaeval grand jury for the
detection and punishment of heretics, was revived, and the Jesuits,
founded in 1534-40, were vigorous in defense of the Church and bitter in
their opposition to all forms of independent inquiry and Protestant
heresy.
It was into this post-Reformation atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and
hatred that the new critical, inquiring, questioning spirit of science, as
applied to the forces of the universe, was born. A century earlier the
first scientists might have obtained a respectful hearing, and might have
been permitted to press their claims; after the Protestant Revolts had
torn Christian Europe asunder this could hardly be. As a result the early
scientists found themselves in no enviable position. Their theories were
bitterly assailed as savoring of heresy; their methods and purposes were
alike suspected; and any challenge of an old long-accepted idea was likely
to bring a punishment that was swift and sure. From the middle of the
sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century was not a time when new
ideas were at a premium anywhere in western Europe. It was essentially a
period of reaction, and periods of reaction are not favorable to
intellectual progress. It was into this century of reaction that modern
scientific inquiry and reasoning, itself another form of expression of the
intellectual attitudes awakened by the work of the humanistic scholars of
the Italian Renaissance, made its first claim for a hearing.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHOD. One of the great problems
which has always deeply interested thinking men in all lands is the nature
and constitution of the material universe, and to this problem people in
all stages of civilization have worked out for themselves some kind of an
answer. It was one of the great speculations of the Greeks, and it was at
Alexandria, in the period of its decadence, that the Egyptian geographer
Ptolemy (138 A.D.) had offered an explanation which was accepted by
Christian Europe and which dominated all thinking on the subject during
the Middle Ages. He had concluded that the earth was located at the center
of the visible universe, immovable, and that the heavenly bodies moved
around the earth, in circular motion, fixed in crystalline spheres. [5]
This explanation accorded perfectly with Christian ideas as to creation,
as well as with Christian conceptions as to the position and place of man
and his relation to the heavens above and to a hell beneath. This theory
was obviously simple and satisfactory, and became sanctified with time. As
we see it now the wonder is that such an explanation could have been
accepted for so long. Only among an uninquisitive people could so
imperfect a theory have endured for over fourteen centuries.
[Illustration: FIG. 113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (Copernicus), (1473-1543)]
In 1543 a Bohemian church canon and physician by the name of Nicholas
Copernicus published his _De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium_, in which he
set forth the explanation of the universe which we now know. He piously
dedicated the work to Pope Paul III, and wisely refrained from publishing
it until the year of his death. [6] Anything so completely upsetting the
Christian conception as to the place and position of man in the universe
could hardly be expected to be accepted, particularly at the time of its
publication, without long and bitter opposition.
In the dedicatory letter (R. 205), Copernicus explains how, after feeling
that the Ptolemaic explanation was wrong, he came to arrive at the
conclusions he did. The steps he set forth form an excellent example of a
method of thinking now common, but then almost unknown. They were:
1. Dissatisfaction with the old Ptolemaic explanation.
2. A study of all known literature, to see if any better explanation
had been offered.
3. Careful thought on the subject, until his thinking took form in a
definite theory.
4. Long observation and testing out, to see if the observed facts
would support his theory.
5. The theory held to be correct, because it reduced all known facts
to a systematic order and harmony.
This is as clear a case of inductive reasoning as was L. Valla's exposure
of the forgery of the so-called "Donation of Constantine," an example of
deductive reasoning. Both used a new method--the method of modern
scholarship. In both cases the results were revolutionary. As Petrarch
stands forth in history as the first modern classical scholar, so
Copernicus stands forth as the first modern scientific thinker. The
beginnings of all modern scientific investigation date from 1543. Of his
work a recent writer (E. C. J. Morton) has said:
Copernicus cannot be said to have flooded with light the dark places
of nature--in the way that one stupendous mind subsequently did--
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