THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
by
ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
Part 8 out of 18
but still, as we look back through the long vista of the history of
science, the dim Titanic figure of the old monk seems to rear itself
out of the dull flats around it, pierces with its head the mists that
overshadow them, and catches the first gleam of the rising sun,...
Like some iron peak, by the Creator
Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.
[Illustration: FIG. 114. TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601)]
THE NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY APPLIED BY OTHERS. At first Copernicus' work
attracted but little attention. An Italian Dominican by the name of
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), deeply impressed by the new theory, set forth
in Latin and Italian the far-reaching and majestic implications of such a
theory of creation, and was burned at the stake at Rome for his pains. A
Dane, Tycho Brahe, after twenty-one years of careful observation of the
heavens, during which time he collected "a magnificent series of
observations, far transcending in accuracy [7] and extent anything that
had been accomplished by his predecessors," showed Aristotle to be wrong
in many particulars. His observations of the comet of 1577 led him to
conclude that the theory of crystalline spheres was impossible, and that
the common view of the time as to their nature [8] was absurd. In 1609 a
German by the name of Johann Kepler (1571-1630), using the records of
observations which Tycho Brahe had accumulated and applying them to the
planet Mars, proved the truth of the Copernican theory and framed his
famous three laws for planetary motion.
[Illustration: FIG. 115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)]
Finally an Italian, Galileo Galilei, a professor at the University of
Pisa, developing a telescope that would magnify to eight diameters,
discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's rings. The story of his
discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is another interesting illustration
of the careful scientific reasoning of these early workers (R. 206).
Galileo also made a number of discoveries in physics, through the use of
new scientific methods, which completely upset the teachings of the
Aristotelians, and made the most notable advances in mechanics since the
days of Archimedes. For his pronounced advocacy of the Copernican theory
he was called to Rome (1615) by the Cardinals of the Inquisition, the
Copernican theory was condemned as "absurd in philosophy" and as
"expressly contrary to Holy Scripture," and Galileo was compelled to
recant (1616) his error. [9] For daring later (1632) to assume that he
might, under a new Pope, defend the Copernican theory, even in an indirect
manner, he was again called before the inquisitorial body, compelled to
recant and abjure his errors (R. 207) to escape the stake, and was then
virtually made a prisoner of the Inquisition for the remainder of his
life. So strongly had the forces of medievalism reasserted themselves
after the Protestant Revolts!
[Illustration: FIG. 116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)]
Finally the English scholar Newton (1642-1728), in his _Principia_ (1687),
settled permanently all discussions as to the Copernican theory by his
wonderful mathematical studies. He demonstrated mathematically the motions
of the planets and comets, proved Kepler's laws to be true, explained
gravitation and the tides, made clear the nature of light, and reduced
dynamics to a science. Of his work a recent writer, Karl Pearson, has
said:
The Newtonian laws of motion form the starting point of most modern
treatises on dynamics, and it seems to me that physical science, thus
started, resembles the mighty genius of an Arabian tale emerging amid
metaphysical exhalations from the bottle in which for long centuries it
had been corked down.
So far-reaching in its importance was the scientific work of Newton that
Pope's couplet seems exceedingly applicable:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
THE NEW METHOD APPLIED IN OTHER FIELDS. The new method of study was soon
applied to other fields by scholars of the new type, here and there, and
always with fruitful results. The Englishman, William Gilbert (1540-1603)
published, in 1600, his _De Arte Magnetica_, and laid the foundations of
the modern study of electricity and magnetism. A German-Swiss by the name
of Hohenheim, but who Latinized his name to Paracelsus (1493-1541), and
who became a professor in the medical faculty at the University of Basle,
in 1526 broke with mediaeval traditions by being one of the first
university scholars to refuse to lecture in Latin. He ridiculed the
medical theories of Hippocrates (p. 197) and Galen (p. 198), and,
regarding the human body as a chemical compound, began to treat diseases
by the administration of chemicals. A Saxon by the name of Landmann, who
also Latinized his name to Agricola (1494-1555), applied chemistry to
mining and metallurgy, and a French potter named Bernard Palissy (c. 1500-
88) applied chemistry to pottery and the arts. To Paracelsus, Agricola,
and Palissy we are indebted for having laid, in the sixteenth century, the
foundations of the study of modern chemistry.
[Illustration: FIG. 117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)]
A Belgian by the name of Vesalius (1514-64) was the first modern to
dissect the human body, and for so doing was sentenced by the Inquisition
to perform a penitential journey to Jerusalem. One of his disciples
discovered the valves in the veins and was the teacher of the Englishman,
William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and later
(1628) dared to publish the fact to the world. These men established the
modern studies of anatomy and physiology. Another early worker was a Swiss
by the name of Conrad Gessner (1516-65), who observed and wrote
extensively on plants and animals, and who stands as the first naturalist
of modern times.
The sixteenth century thus marks the rise of modern scientific inquiry,
and the beginnings of the study of modern science. The number of scholars
engaged in the study was still painfully small, and the religious
prejudice against which they worked was strong and powerful, but in the
work of these few men we have not only the beginnings of the study of
modern astronomy, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, medicine, anatomy,
physiology, and natural history, but also the beginnings of a group of
men, destined in time to increase greatly in number, who could see
straight, and who sought facts regardless of where they might lead and
what preconceived ideas they might upset. How deeply the future of
civilization is indebted to such men, men who braved social ostracism and
often the wrath of the Church as well, for the, to them, precious
privilege of seeing things as they are, we are not likely to over-
estimate. In time their work was destined to reach the schools, and to
materially modify the character of all education.
[Illustration: FIG. 118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)]
HUMAN REASON IN THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE. To the English statesman and
philosopher, Francis Bacon, more than to any one else, are we indebted for
the proper formulation and statement of this new scientific method. Though
not a scientist himself, he has often been termed "the father of modern
science." Seeing clearly the importance of the new knowledge, he broke
entirely with the old scholastic deductive logic as expressed in the
_Organon_, of Aristotle, and formulated and expressed the methods of
inductive reasoning in his _Novum Organum_, published in 1620. In this he
showed the insufficiency of the method of argumentation; analyzed and
formulated the inductive method of reasoning, of which his study as to the
nature of heat [10] is a good example; and pointed out that knowledge is a
process, and not an end in itself; and indicated the immense and fruitful
field of science to which the method might be applied. By showing how to
learn from nature herself he turned the Renaissance energy into a new
direction, and made a revolutionary break with the disputations and
deductive logic of the Aristotelian scholastics which had for so long
dominated university instruction.
In formulating the new method he first pointed out the defects of the
learning of his time, which he classified under the head of "distempers,"
three in number, and as follows:
1. _Fantastic learning_: Alchemy, magic, miracles, old-wives,
tales, credulities, superstitions, pseudo-science, and impostures of
all sorts inherited from an ignorant past, and now conserved as
treasures of knowledge.
2. _Contentious learning_: The endless disputations of the
Scholastics about questions which had lost their significance,
deductive in character, not based on any observation, not aimed
primarily to arrive at truth, "fruitful of controversy, and barren of
effect."
3. _Delicate learning_: The new learning of the humanistic
Renaissance, verbal and not real, stylish and polished but not
socially important, and leading to nothing except a mastery of itself.
As an escape from these three types of distempers, which well
characterized the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to
the fifteenth centuries, Bacon offered the inductive method, by means of
which men would be able to distinguish true from false, learn to see
straight, create useful knowledge, and fill in the great gaps in the
learning of the time by actually working out new knowledge from the
unknown. The collecting, organizing, comparing, questioning, and inferring
spirit of the humanistic revival he now turned in a new direction by
organizing and formulating for the work a new _Organum_ to take the place
of the old _Organon_ of Aristotle. In Book 1 he sets forth some of the
difficulties (R. 208) with which those who try new experiments or work out
new methods of study have to contend from partisans of old ideas.
The _Novum Organum_ showed the means of escape from the errors of two
thousand years by means of a new method of thinking and work. Bacon did
not invent the new method--it had been used since man first began to
reason about phenomena, and was the method by means of which Wycliffe,
Luther, Magellan, Copernicus, Brahe, and Gilbert had worked--but he was
the first to formulate it clearly and to point out the vast field of new
and useful knowledge that might be opened up by applying human reason,
along inductive lines, to the investigation of the phenomena of nature.
His true service to science lay in the completeness of his analysis of the
inductive process, and his declaration that those who wish to arrive at
useful discoveries must travel by that road. As Macaulay well says, in his
essay on Bacon:
He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that
road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road.
But he was the person who first called the public attention to an
inexhaustible mine of wealth which had been utterly neglected, and
which was accessible by that road alone.
To stimulate men to the discovery of useful truth, to turn the energies of
mankind--even slowly--from assumption and disputation to patient
experimentation, [11.] and to give an impress to human thinking which it
has retained for centuries, is, as Macaulay well says, "the rare
prerogative of a few imperial spirits." Macaulay's excellent summary of
the importance of Bacon's work (R. 209) is well worth reading at this
point.
THE NEW METHOD IN THE HANDS OF SUBSEQUENT WORKERS. By the middle of the
seventeenth century many important advances had been made in many
different lines of scientific work. In the two centuries between 1450 and
1650, the foundations of modern mathematics and mechanics had been laid.
At the beginning of the period Arabic notation and the early books of
Euclid were about all that were taught; at its end the western world had
worked out decimals, symbolic algebra, much of plane and spherical
trigonometry, mechanics, logarithms (1614) and conic sections (1637), and
was soon to add the calculus (1667-87). Mercator had published the map of
the world (1569) which has ever since born his name, and the Gregorian
calendar had been introduced (1572). The barometer, thermometer, air-pump,
pendulum clock, and the telescope had come into use in the period. Alchemy
had passed over into modern chemistry; and the astrologer was finding less
and less to do as the astronomer took his place. The English Hippocrates,
Thomas Sydenham (1624-89), during this period laid the foundations of
modern medical study, and the microscope was applied to the study of
organic forms. Modern ideas as to light and optics and gases, and the
theory of gravitation, were about to be set forth. All these advances had
been made during the century following the epoch-making labors of
Copernicus, the first modern scientific man to make an impression on the
thinking of mankind.
[Illustration: FIG. 119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES Each short
horizontal line indicates the life-span of a very distinguished scholar in
the science. Mohammedan scientists have not been included. The relative
neglect or ignorance of a science has been indicated by the depth of the
shading. The great loss to civilization caused by the barbarian inroads
and the hostile attitude of the early Church is evident.]
Accompanying this new scientific work there arose, among a few men in each
of the western European countries, an interest in scientific studies such
as the world had not witnessed since the days of the Alexandrian Greek.
This interest found expression in the organization of scientific
societies, wholly outside the universities of the time, for the reporting
of methods and results, and for the mingling together in sympathetic
companionship of these seekers after new truth. The most important dates
connected with the rise of these societies are:
1603. The Lyncean Society at Rome.
1619. Jungius founded the Natural Science Association at Rostock.
1645. The Royal Society of London began to meet; constituted in 1660;
chartered in 1662.
1657. The Academia del Cimento at Florence.
1662. The Imperial Academy of Germany.
1666. The Academy of Sciences in France.
1675. The National Observatory at Greenwich established.
After 1650 the advance of science was rapid. The spirit of modern inquiry,
which in the sixteenth century had animated but a few minds, by the middle
of the seventeenth had extended to all the principal countries of Europe.
The striking results obtained during the seventeenth century revealed the
vast field waiting to be explored, and filled many independent modern-type
scholars with an enthusiasm for research in the new domain of science. By
the close of the eighteenth century the main outlines of most of the
modern sciences had been established.
LEADING THINKERS OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITIES. During the seventeenth century,
and largely during the eighteenth as well, the extreme conservatism of the
universities, their continued control by their theological faculties, and
their continued devotion to theological controversy and the teachings of
state orthodoxy rather than the advancement of knowledge, served to make
of them such inhospitable places for the new scientific method that
practically all the leading workers with it were found outside the
universities. This was less true of England than other lands, but was in
part true of English universities as well. As civil servants, court
attaches, pensioners of royalty, or as private citizens of means they
found, as independent scholars reporting to the recently formed scientific
societies, a freedom for investigation and a tolerance of ideas then
scarcely possible anywhere in the university world.
[Illustration: FIG. 120. RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)]
Tycho Brahe and Kepler were pensioners of the Emperor at Prague. Lord
Bacon was a lawyer and political leader, and became a peer of England.
Descartes, the mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, to whom we
are indebted for conic sections; Napier, inventor of logarithms; and Ray
and Willoughby, who did the first important work in botany and zoology in
England, were all independent scholars. The air-pump was invented by the
Burgomaster of Madgeburg. Huygens, the astronomer and inventor of the
clock was a pensioner of the King of France. Cassini, who explained the
motion of Jupiter's satellites, was Astronomer Royal at Paris. Halley, who
demonstrated the motions of the moon and who first predicted the return of
a comet, held a similar position at Greenwich. Van Helmont and Boyle, who
together laid the foundations of our chemical knowledge, were both men of
noble lineage who preferred the study of the new sciences to a life of
ease at court. Harvey was a physician and demonstrator of anatomy in
London. Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, was a pensioner of Cromwell and
a physician in Westminster. The German mathematical scholar, Leibnitz, who
jointly with Newton discovered the calculus, scorned a university
professorship and remained an attache of a German court. Newton, though
for a time a professor at Cambridge, during most of his mature life held
the royal office of Warden of the Mint. These are a few notable
illustrations of scientific scholars of the first rank who remained
outside the universities to obtain advantages and freedom not then to be
found within their walls. Much these same conditions continued throughout
most of the eighteenth century, during which many remarkable advances in
all lines of pure science were made. By the close of this century the
universities had been sufficiently modernized that scientific workers
began to find in them an atmosphere conducive to scientific teaching and
research; during the nineteenth century they became the homes of
scientific progress and instruction; to-day they are deeply interested in
the promotion of scientific research.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Show that the rise of scientific inquiry was but another manifestation
of the same inquiring spirit which had led to the recovery of the ancient
literatures and history.
2. What do you understand to be meant by the failure of the Greeks to
standardize their observations by instruments?
3. Show that it would be possible largely to determine the character of a
civilization, if one knew only the prevailing ideas and conceptions as to
scientific and religious matters.
4. Show the two different types of reasoning involved in the deduction of
L. Valla (p. 246) and the induction of Copernicus.
5. Of which type was the reasoning of Galileo as to Jupiter's satellites?
6. Show that the three "distempers" described by Bacon characterize the
three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth
centuries.
7. How do you explain the long rejection of the new sciences by the
universities?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
203. Macaulay: Attitude of the Ancients toward Scientific Inquiry.
204. Franck: The Credulity of Mediaeval People.
205. Copernicus: How he arrived at the theory he set forth.
206. Brewster: Galileo's Discovery of the Satellites of Jupiter.
207. Inquisition: The Abjuration of Galileo.
208. Bacon: On Scientific Progress.
209. Macaulay: The Importance of Bacon's Work.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. How do you explain the attitude of the ancients toward scientific
inquiry?
2. State the ancient purpose in pursuing scientific studies.
3. Contrast Bacon and Plato as to aims.
4. Show that the thinking of Copernicus as to the motions of the heavenly
bodies was an excellent example of deductive thinking.
5. Show that the discovery and reasoning of Galileo was an example of the
common method of reasoning of to-day.
6. Were the difficulties that surrounded scientific inquiry and progress,
as described by Bacon, easily removed?
7. Explain the readiness with which the clergy have so commonly opposed
scientific inquiry for fear that the results might upset preconceived
theological ideas.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Ball, W. R. R. _History of Mathematics at Cambridge_.
* Libby, Walter. _An Introduction to the History of Science_.
Ornstein, Martha. _Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth
Century_.
* Routledge, Robert. _A Popular History of Science_.
* Sedgwick, W. T. and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_.
* White, A. D. _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, 2
vols. Wordsworth Christopher. _Scholae Academicae; Studies at the
English Universities in the Eighteenth Century_.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS
THE RISE OF REALISM IN EDUCATION. As will be remembered from our study of
the educational results of the Revival of Learning (chapter XI), the new
schools established in the reaction against medievalism, to teach pure
Latin and Greek, in time became formal and lifeless (p. 283), and their
aim came to be almost entirely that of imparting a mastery of the
Ciceronian style, both in writing and in speech. This idea, first clearly
inaugurated by Sturm at Strassburg (R. 137), had now become fixed, and in
its extreme is illustrated by the teachings of the Jesuit Campion at
Prague (R. 146). As a reaction against this extreme position of the
humanistic scholars there arose, during the sixteenth century, and as a
further expression of the new critical spirit awakened by the Revival of
Learning, a demand for a type of education which would make truth rather
than beauty, and the realities of the life of the time rather than the
beauties of a life of Roman days, the aim and purpose of education. This
new spirit became known as Realism, was contemporaneous with the rise of
scientific inquiry, and was an expression of a similar dissatisfaction
with the learning of the time. As applied to education this new spirit may
be said to have manifested itself in three different stages, as follows:
1. Humanistic realism.
2. Social realism.
3. Sense realism.
We will explain each of these, briefly, in order.
1. HUMANISTIC REALISM
A NEW AIM IN INSTRUCTION. Humanistic realism represents the beginning of
the reaction against form and style and in favor of ideas and content. The
humanistic realists were in agreement with the classical humanists that
the old classical literatures and the Bible contained all that was
important in the education of youth. The ancient literatures, they held,
presented "not only the widest product of human intelligence, but
practically all that was worthy of man's attention." The two groups
differed, however, in that the classical humanists conceived the aim of
education to be the mastery of the vocabulary and style of Cicero, and the
production of a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly
world, while the new humanistic realists wanted to use the old literatures
as a means to a new end--that of teaching knowledge that would be useful
in the world in which they lived. Monroe has so well expressed the
humanistic-realist attitude that a passage from his History is worth
quoting here. He says:
Not only did ancient philosophy contain the true philosophy of this
life, but languages were the key to the real understanding of the
Christian religion. Not only did mastery of these languages give power
of speech, and hence influence over one's fellows; but, if military
science was to be studied, it could in no place be better searched for
than in Caesar and in Xenophon; was agriculture to be practiced, no
better guide was to be found than Virgil or Columella; was
architecture to be mastered, no better way existed than through
Vitruvius; was geography to be considered, it must be through Mela or
Solinus; was medicine to be understood, no better means than Celsus
existed; was natural history to be appreciated, there was no more
adequate source of information than Pliny and Seneca. Aristotle
furnished the basis of all the sciences, Plato of all philosophy,
Cicero of all institutional life, and the Church Fathers and the
Scriptures of all religion.
EXPONENTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The Dutch international scholar Erasmus
(1467?-1536) (p. 274), the Frenchman Rabelais (1483-1553), and the English
poet Milton (1608-74) stand as the clearest representatives of this new
humanistic realism.
Erasmus had clearly distinguished between the education of words and the
education of things, had pointed out the ease with which real truth is
learned and retained, and had urged the study of the content rather than
the form of the ancient authors. In his _System of Studies_ he said:
From these very authors (Latin and Greek), whom we read for the sake
of improving our language, incidentally, in no small degree is a
knowledge of things gathered.
In his _Ciceronian_ he had ridiculed those who mistook the form for the
spirit of the ancients.
The French non-conforming monk, cure, physician, and university scholar,
Francois Rabelais, in his satirical _Life of Gargantua_ (1535) and _The
Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel_ (1533) had set forth, even more clearly, the
idea of obtaining from a study of the ancient authors (R. 210) knowledge
that would be useful. Writing largely in the character of a clown and a
fool, because such was a safer method, he protested against the formal,
shallow, and insincere life of his age. He made as vigorous a protest
against medievalism and formalism as he dared, for he lived in a time when
new ideas were dangerous commodities for one to carry about or to try to
express. He ridiculed the old scholastic learning, set forth the idea of
using the old classics for realistic as well as humanistic ends, and also
advocated physical, moral, social, and religious education in the spirit
of the best writers and teachers of the Italian Renaissance. His book was
extensively read and had some influence in shaping thinking, though
Rabelais's importance in the history of education lies rather in his
influence on later educational thinkers than on the life of his time.
[Illustration: FIG. 121. FRANCOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553)]
Perhaps the clearest example of humanistic realism is found in the
writings of the English poet and humanitarian, John Milton. His _Tractate
on Education_ (1644) was extensively read, and was influential in shaping
educational practice in the non-conformist secondary academies which arose
a little later in England. Still later his ideas indirectly somewhat
influenced American development.
Milton first gives us an excellent statement of the new religious-civic
aim of post-Reformation education (R. 211), and then points out the
defects of the existing education, whereby boys "spend seven or eight
years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latine and Greek, as
might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year." He then
presents his plan for "a compleat and generous Education" for "noble and
gentle youths," and tells "how all this may be done between twelve and one
and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at Grammar and
Sophistry." The course of study he outlines (R. 212) is enormous. The
first year, that is beginning at twelve, the boy is to learn Latin
grammar, arithmetic, and geometry, and to read simple Latin and Greek.
During the next three or four years the pupil is to master Greek, and to
study agriculture, geography, natural philosophy, physiology, mathematics,
fortification, engineering, architecture, and natural history, all by
reading the chief writings of the ancients, in prose and poetry, on these
subjects. During the remaining years to twenty-one the pupil, similarly,
is to obtain ethical instruction from the Greeks and the Bible; learn
Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Saxon law; learn Italian and Hebrew; and study
economics, politics, history, logic, rhetoric, and poetry by reading
selected ancient authors. What Rabelais suggested in jest for his giant,
Milton adopted as a program for the school. In addition, in thoroughly
characteristic modern English fashion, he makes careful provision for
daily exercise and play. Aside, though, from its impossibility of
accomplishment except by a superior few, Milton's plan is thoroughly
representative of the new humanistic-realistic point of view-that is, that
education should impart useful information, though the information as
Milton conceived it was to be drawn almost entirely from the books of the
ancients.
[Illustration: FIG. 122. JOHN MILTON (1608-74)]
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The importance of humanistic
realism in the history of education lies largely in that it was the first
of a series of reactions that led later to sense-realism--that is, to the
study of science and the application of scientific method in the schools.
In England it possesses still larger importance. Milton had called his
institution an "Academy." [1] After the restoration of the Stuarts
(Charles II, 1660), some two thousand non-conforming clergymen were
"dispossessed" by the Act of Conformity (1662; R. 166), and soon after
this the children of Non-Conformists were excluded from the grammar
schools and universities. Many of these clergymen now turned to teaching
as a means of earning a livelihood and serving their people, and the ideas
of the non-conformist Milton were influential in turning the schools thus
established even further toward the study of useful subjects. Many of the
new schools offered instruction in the modern languages, logic, rhetoric,
ethics, geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying,
navigation, history, oratory, economics, and natural and moral philosophy,
as well as the old classical subjects. All teaching, too, was done in
English, and the study of English language and literature was emphasized.
This made these non-conformist academies in many respects superior to the
older Latin grammar schools. After the enactment of the Toleration Act, in
1689, these schools were allowed to incorporate and were gradually
absorbed into the existing Latin grammar-school system of England, but
unfortunately without producing much change in the character of these
older institutions.
The idea of offering instruction in these new studies was in time carried
to America, where better results were obtained. At first a few of the
subjects, such as the mathematical studies, surveying, navigation, and
English, were introduced into the existing Latin grammar or other schools
of secondary grade. Especially was this true in the colonies south of New
England. After 1751, and especially after about 1780, distinct Academies
arose in the United States (chapter XVIII), whose purpose was to offer
instruction in all these new subjects of study. From these our modern high
schools have been derived.
II. SOCIAL REALISM
[Illustration: FIG. 123. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-92)]
MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. Social realism represents a still further reaction
away from the humanistic schools. It was the natural reaction of practical
men of the new world against a type of education that tended to perpetuate
the pedantry of an earlier age, by devoting its energies to the production
of the scholar and professional man to the neglect of the man of affairs.
The social realists were small in number, but powerful because of their
important social connections and wealth, and they were very determined to
have an education suited to their needs, even if they had to create it
themselves (R. 213). The French nobleman, scholar, author, and civic
officer, M. de Montaigne (1533-92), and the English philosopher, John
Locke (1632-1704), were the clearest exponents of this new point of view,
though it found expression in the writings of many others. Each declared
for a practical, useful type of education for the young boy who was to
live the life of a gentleman in the world of affairs.
Neither had any sympathy with the colleges and grammar schools of the time
(R. 214), and both rejected the school for the private tutor. This tutor
must be selected with great care, and first of all must be a well-bred
gentleman--a man, as Montaigne says, "who has rather a well-made than a
well-filled head" (R. 215). Locke cautions that "one fit to educate and
form the Mind of a young Gentleman is not every where to be found," and of
the common type of teacher he asks, "When such an one has empty'd out into
his Pupil all the Latin and Logick he has brought from the University,
will that Furniture make him a fine Gentleman?" (R. 216).
Both condemn the school training of their time, and both urge that the
tutor train the judgment and the understanding rather than the memory. To
impart good manners rather than mere information, and to train for life in
the world rather than for the life of a scholar, seem to both of
fundamental importance in the education of a boy. "The great world," says
Montaigne, "is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves. In short, I
would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the
most attention." "Latin and Learning," says Locke, "make all the Noise;
and the main Stress is laid upon Proficiency in Things a great Part
whereof belong not to a Gentleman's Calling; which is to have the
Knowledge of a Man of Business, a Carriage suitable to his Rank, and to be
eminent and useful to his Country, according to his Station" (R. 216).
Both emphasized the importance of travel abroad as an important factor in
the education of a gentleman.
THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Both Montaigne and Locke were
concerned alone with the education of the sons of gentlemen, individuals
now coming rapidly into prominence to dispute place in the world of
affairs with the higher nobility on the one hand and the clergy on the
other. With the education of any other class Montaigne never concerned
himself. As for Locke, he was later appointed a King's Commissioner, with
certain oversight of the poor, and for the education of the children of
such he drew up a careful report which, in true English fashion, provided
for their training in workhouses and their apprenticeship to a trade (R.
217). He wrote nothing with regard to the education of the children of
middle-class workers and tradesmen. Both authors also deal entirely with
the work of a tutor, and not with the work of a teacher in a school.
Neither deals specifically with elementary education, but rather with
what, in Europe, would be called the secondary-school period in the
education of a boy. Locke was extensively read by the gentry of England,
as expressive of the best current practice of their class, and his ideas
as to education were also of some influence in shaping the instruction of
the non-conformist teachers in the academies there. His place in the
history of education is also of some importance, as we shall point out
later, for the disciplinary theory of education which he set forth. Still
more, Locke later exerted a deep influence on the writings of Rousseau
(chapter XXI), and hence helped materially to shape modern educational
theory.
[Illustration: FIG. 124. JOHN LOCKE (1631-1704)]
THE NEW SCHOOLS FOR THE SONS OF THE GENTRY. Both Montaigne and Locke, in
their emphasis on the importance of a practical education for the social
and political demands of a gentleman concerned with the affairs of the
modern world, represent a still further reaction against the humanistic
schools of the time than did the humanistic realists whom we have just
considered. Still more, both are expressive of the attitude of the
nobility and gentry of the time, who had almost deserted the schools as
pedantic institutions of little value. France was then the great country
of Europe, and French language, French political ideas, French manners,
and French tutors found their way into all neighboring lands. A new social
and political ideal was erected--that of the polished man of the world,
who could speak French, had traveled, knew history and politics, law and
geography, heraldry and genealogy, some mathematics and physics with their
applications, could use the sword and ride, was adept in games and
dancing, and was skilled in the practical affairs of life.
[Illustration: FIG. 125. AN ACADEMIE DES ARMES
From an early eighteenth-century Parisian poster, advertising an Academy.]
To give such training the French created numerous Academies in their
cities. A writer of 1649 states that there were twelve such institutions
at that time in Paris alone. Not infrequently some nobleman was at the
head. Boys were first educated at home by tutors, and then sent to the
Academy to be trained in riding, the military arts, fortification,
mathematics, the modern languages, and the many graces of a gentleman. The
Englishman, John Evelyn, who was in France in 1644, thus describes the
French Academies:
At the Palais Cardinal in Paris I frequently went to see them ride and
exercise the Greate Horse, especially at the Academy of Monsieur du
Plessis, and de Veau, whose scholes of that art are frequented by the
Nobility; and here also young gentlemen are taught to fence, daunce,
play on musiq, and something in fortifications and mathematics.
At Richelieu, near Tours, belongs an Academy where besides the
exercise of the horse, armes, dauncing, etc., all the sciences are
taught in the vulgar French by Professors stipendiated by the great
Cardinal. The Academy of Juilly included some study of physical
science, mathematics, geography, heraldry, French history, Italian,
and Spanish, besides the riding and gentlemanly arts.
In England the tutor in the home became the type form for the education of
the sons of a gentleman, the boys frequently being sent abroad to complete
their education. In German lands, which in the seventeenth century were in
close sympathy with French life and thought, Heidelberg being a center for
the dissemination of French ideas, the French academy idea was copied, and
what were called _Ritterakademieen_ (knightly academies) were founded in
the numerous court cities [2] for the education, along such lines, of the
sons of the many grades of the German nobility. Between 1620 and 1780,
before the rise of the German nationalistic movement which sought to
replace French ideas by native German culture, was the great period of
these German court schools, and during this period they bestowed on the
sons of the German nobility the courtly and military education of the
French academies. The education of the nobility was in consequence
segregated from the intellectual life of other classes. "Gallants" and
"pedants" were the respective outputs of the two types of schools.
III. SENSE REALISM
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further
and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very
direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing
work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:
(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the
sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general
method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce
educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a
great saving of time; and
(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the
vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies,
deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion
to linguistic studies.
The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in
education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of
intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century
we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in
practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the
seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to
formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and
the treatise of Quintilian.
The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify
the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number
of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new
methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von
Raumer, has called _Innovators_. The chief pedagogical ideas of the
Innovators were:
1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and
the concrete to the abstract.
2. That things should come before rules.
3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than to
construct.
4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself,
rather than to accept or depend upon authority.
5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood and
of real value.
6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in the
studies taught.
7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for all
instruction.
8. That the study of real things should precede the study of words
about things.
9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that a
method of teaching based on this then be worked out.
10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake of
health, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.
11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an education
in the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.
12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete an
education, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.
13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked
out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide
for teachers everywhere.
The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the
German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and
teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of
this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be
considered here as types.
WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge
should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had
suggested, in his _Advancement of Learning_ (1603-05), a broader course
of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and
teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on
school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of
those who followed his thinking.
The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to
evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the
name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read
Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke
tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with
much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he
issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral
Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new
method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with
momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:
1. By using the German language in the earlier years:
(a) Bring about the use of one common language among the German
people, and thus lay the basis for unity in government and
religion;
(b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.
2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than
had previously been required for one language only.
This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only
on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were
appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.
In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his _Methodus Nova_, which was the
pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here.
In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought
them out. They were as follows:
1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.
2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.
3. Much repetition to insure retention.
4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages to
be taught through it.
5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach,
and the scholars to keep order and discipline.
6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.
7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.
8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.
9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.
We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the
foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.
During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as
the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the
Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of
the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an
experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the
necessary books, the people of the village of Koethen, in Anhalt, were
ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with
Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a
half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and
his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he
himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This
ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the
forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.
JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS. We now reach not only the greatest representative of
sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the
eighteenth century, but also one of the commanding figures in the history
of education. Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. As a
member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower
of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which
raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War. His
home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and
children murdered, and himself at times a fugitive and later an exile,
Comenius gave his long life to the advancement of the interests of mankind
through religion and learning. Driven from his home and country, he became
a scholar of the world.
While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read
and was deeply impressed by the "Address" of Ratke. Bacon's _Novum
Organum_, which appeared when he was twenty-eight, made a still deeper
impression upon him. He seems to have been familiar also with the writings
of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands. He
traveled extensively, and maintained a large correspondence with the
scholars of his time. He was master of a Latin school in Moravia from the
age of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the
Moravian Church. Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all
Protestant ministers, from his native land, and while an exile for a time
took charge of a school at Lissa, in Poland. Here he worked out, in
practice, the great work on method which he later published. In 1638 he
was invited to reform the schools of Sweden; in 1641 he visited England,
in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent
the next eight years working at school reform in Sweden; from 1650 to 1654
he was in charge of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked
out his famous textbooks for teaching language; he was consulted with
reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he
returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was
made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylum in
Amsterdam, where he died in 1671, at the age of seventy-nine. The verse
beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his
life.
COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD. While teaching at Lissa, in Poland,
Comenius had formulated for himself the principles underlying school
instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he called _The Great
Didactic_. [5] The title page (R. 218) and the table of contents (R. 219)
will give an idea as to its scope. In this work Comenius formulated and
explained his two fundamental ideas, namely, that all instruction must be
carefully graded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in
imparting knowledge to children, the teacher must make constant appeal
through sense-perception to the understanding of the child. We have here
the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands
as the clearest exponent of sense realism in teaching up to his time, and
for more than a century afterward.
Deeply religious by nature and training, Comenius held the Holy Scriptures
to contain the beginning and end of all learning; to know God aright he
held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended
that the education of every human being was a necessity if mankind was to
enter into its religious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were
to be brought to their fruition. Unlike those who were enthusiasts for
religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of
service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was
needed. Still more, he believed in the education of human beings simply
because they were human beings, and not merely for salvation, as Luther
had held.
Comenius was the first to formulate a practicable school method, working
along the new lines marked out by Bacon. He had no psychology to guide
him, and worked largely by analogies from nature. A great idea with him
was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the
conclusions that education should proceed from the easy to the difficult,
the near to the remote, the general to the special, and the known to the
unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was imparting and
guiding, and not storing the memory. These conclusions seem commonplaces
to us of to-day, but what is commonplace today was genius three hundred
years ago. To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on
the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too
much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to
fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie new knowledge to
old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by
precept--were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Comenius
worked out and formulated in his _Didactica Magna_. [6] His plea for a
mild and gentle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his
emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to
the importance of early education, his careful gradation of the school,
and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-emphasizing
its importance--all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who
saw deeply into the nature of the educational process.
[Illustration: PLATE 10. JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1671)
The Moravian Bishop at the age of fifty. (After an engraving by Glover,
printed as a frontispiece to Hartlib's _A Reformation of Schooles_.
London, 1642.)
Loe, here an Exile, who to serve his God,
Hath sharply tasted of proud Pashurs Rod
Whose learning, Piety, & true worth, being knowne
To all the world, makes all the world his owne. F.Q.]
COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS. In his _Didactica
Magna_ Comenius divided the school life of a child into four great
divisions. The first concerned the period from infancy to the age of six,
which he called The Mother School. For this period he wrote _The School of
Infancy_ (1628), a book intended primarily for parents, and one of such
deep insight and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may
still read it with interest and profit. In it he anticipated many of the
ideas of the kindergarten of to-day. The next division was The Vernacular
School, which covered the period from the ages of six to twelve. For this
period six classes were to be provided, and the emphasis was to be on the
mother tongue. This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the
basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils
to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary
business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know
certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the
Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially
the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and
astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all of
which, says Comenius, can be taught better through the mother tongue than
through the medium of the Latin and Greek. In scope this school
corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe.
The next school was The Latin School, covering the years from twelve to
eighteen, and in this German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were to be taught,
by improved methods, and with physics and mathematics added. This school
he divided into six classes, named from the principal study in each, as
follows: (1) Grammar, (2) Physics, (3) Mathematics, (4) Ethics, (5)
Dialectics, (6) Rhetoric. He also later outlined a plan for a six-class
_Gymnasium_ for Saros-Patak (R. 220), culminating in a seventh year for
preparation for the ministry, which was an improvement on the Latin School
and very modern in character. Had such a school become common, secondary
education in Europe might have been a century in advance of where the
nineteenth century found it. The Latin school was to be attended only by
those of ability who were likely to enter the service of Church or State,
or who intended to pass on to the University. This last was to cover the
period from eighteen to twenty-four. Unlike all educational practice of
his time and later, Comenius here provides for an educational ladder of
the present-day American type, wholly unlike the European two-class school
system which (p. 353) later evolved.
COMENIUS' WORK IN REFORMING LANGUAGE TEACHING. At the time Comenius lived
and wrote, the languages constituted almost the only subject of study, and
Latin grammar was the great introductory subject. The mediaeval grammars
(Donatus; Alexander de Villa Dei; pp. 156, 155) had been so poor that the
instruction was difficult and, in consequence, long drawn out. Lily's
Latin Grammar (p. 276), published in 1513, and Melanchthon's Latin
Grammar, published in 1525, had represented marked advances. Still the
subject remained difficult, even when taught from these new types of
grammars. Comenius early became convinced, as a result of his teaching and
studies in educational method, that the ancient classical authors were not
only too difficult for boys beginning the study of Latin, but that they
also did not contain the type of real knowledge he felt should be taught
in the schools. He accordingly set to work to construct a series of
introductory Latin readers which would form a graded introduction to the
study of Latin, and which would also introduce the pupil to the type of
world knowledge and scientific information he felt should be taught.
His plan eventually embraced a graded series of five books, as follows:
1. The _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, or the World of Sense Objects
Pictured. This was an illustrated primer and first reader, which
appeared in 1658, and was the first illustrated book ever written for
children (R. 221).
2. The _Vestibulum_ (Vestibule, or gate). An easy first reader,
consisting of but a few hundred of the most commonly used Latin words
and sentences, with a translation into the vernacular in parallel
columns. This book required about a half-year for its completion.
3. The _Janua Linguarum Reserata_, or Gate of Languages Unlocked.
This was the first of the series printed (1631), the _Vestibulum_
being an easy introduction to it, and the _Orbis Pictus_ being
the _Janua_ simplified and illustrated. The _Janua_
contained some eight thousand Latin words, arranged in simple
sentences, with the vernacular equivalent in parallel columns;
included information on a variety of subjects; [7] and was a regular
Noah's Ark for vocabulary purposes. It embraced sufficient reading
material and grammar for a year.
4. The _Atrium_. This was an expansion of the _Janua_, and
treated the same topics more in detail. It was intended to be an
advanced reader, based, as was the _Janua_, on studies about the
real things of life. The vocabulary now was Latin-Latin, instead of
Latin-vernacular.
5. The _Thesaurus_, which was never completed, but was planned to
be a collection of graded extracts from easy Latin authors--Cornelius
Nepos, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Pliny--to furnish the
needed reading material for the three upper years of the Latin School.
THE TEXTBOOKS ILLUSTRATED. Beginning in the _Janua_, and afterwards in the
_Vestibulum_ and _Orbis Pictus_ as well, Comenius not only simplified the
teaching of Latin by producing the best textbooks for instruction in the
subject the world had ever known, but he also shifted the whole emphasis
in instruction from words to things, and made the teaching of scientific
knowledge and useful world information the keynote of his work. The
hundred different chapters of the _Janua_, and the hundred and fifty-one
chapters of the _Orbis Pictus_, were devoted to imparting information as
to all kinds of useful subjects. The following selections from the chapter
titles of the _Orbis Pictus_ illustrate how large a place the new
scientific studies occupied in his conception of the school:
The World Birds Weaving Philosophy
The Heavens Cattle Tailor Prudence
Fire Fish Barber Diligence
Wind Parts of Man Schoolmaster Temperance
Water Flesh and Bowels Shoemaker Fortitude
Clouds Chanels and Bones Carpenter Humanity
Earth Senses Potter Justice
Fruits Deformities Printing Consanguinity
Metals Husbandry Geometry A City
Trees Bees and Honey The Planets Merchandizing
Herbs Butchery Eclipses A Burial
Flowers Cookery Europe Religious Forms
The accompanying illustrations (Figs. 126, 127) reveal the nature of the
text-books he prepared. (See also R. 221 for four additional pages of
illustrations from the _Orbis Pictus_.)
[Illustration: FIG. 126. A SAMPLE PAGE FROM THE "ORBIS PICTUS"
The illustration and Latin text is from the first edition of 1658; the
English translation from the English edition of 1727.]
The success of these textbooks was immediate and very great. Within a
short time after the publication of the _Janua_ it had been translated
into Flemish, Bohemian, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian,
Italian, Latin, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as into Arabic,
Mongolian, Russian, and Turkish. The _Orbis Pictus_ was an even greater
success. [8] It went through many editions, in many languages; stood
without a competitor in Europe for a hundred and fifteen years; and was
used as an introductory textbook for nearly two hundred years. An American
edition was brought out in New York City, as late as 1810.
[Illustration: FIG. 127. PART OF A PAGE FROM A LATIN-ENGLISH EDITION OF
THE "VESTIBULUM"]
Thousands of parents, who knew nothing of Comenius and cared nothing for
his educational ideas, bought the book for their children because they
found that they liked the pictures and learned the language easily from
it. [9]
PLACE AND INFLUENCE OF COMENIUS. Comenius stands in the history of
education in a position of commanding importance. He introduces the whole
modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the
modern movements for the improvement of educational procedure. What
Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wycliffe was to religious
thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and
Descartes were to modern philosophy, Comenius was to educational practice
and thinking (R. 222). The germ of almost all eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century educational theory is to be found in his work, and he, more than
any one before him and for at least two centuries after him, made an
earnest effort to introduce the new science studies into the school. Far
more liberal than his Lutheran or Calvinistic or Anglican or Catholic
contemporaries, he planned his school for the education of youth in
religion and learning and to fit them for the needs of a modern world.
Unlike the textbooks of his time, and for more than a century afterward,
his were free from either sectarian bigotry or the intense and gloomy
atmosphere of the age.
Yet Comenius lived at an unfortunate period in the history of human
progress. The early part of the seventeenth century was not a time when an
enthusiastic and aggressive and liberal-minded reformer could expect much
of a hearing anywhere in western Europe. The shock of the contest into
which western Christendom had been plunged by the challenge of Luther had
been felt in every corner of Europe, and the culmination of a century of
warfare was then raging, with all the bitterness and brutality that a
religious motive develops. Christian Europe was too filled with an
atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to
consider reforms for the improvement of the education of mankind. As a
result the far-reaching changes in method formulated by Comenius made but
slight impression on his contemporaries; his attempt to introduce
scientific studies awakened suspicion, rather than interest; and the new
method which he formulated in his _Great Didactic_ was ignored and the
book itself was forgotten for centuries. His great influence on
educational progress was through the reform his textbooks worked in the
teaching of Latin, and the slow infiltration into the schools of the
scientific ideas they contained. As a result, many of the fundamentally
sound reforms for which he stood had to be worked out anew in the
nineteenth century. It is sad to contemplate how far our western world
might have been advanced in its educational organization and scientific
progress, by the close of the eighteenth century, had it been in a mood to
receive and utilize the reforms in aims and methods, and to accept the new
scientific subject-matter, proposed and worked out by this far-sighted
Moravian teacher. Religious bigotry has, in all lands and ages, proved
itself one of the most serious of all obstacles in the path of human
progress.
IV. REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS
THE VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. The ideas for which the realists just described
had stood were adopted in the people's schools but slowly, and came only
after long waiting. The final incorporation of science instruction into
elementary education did not come until the nineteenth century, and then
was an outgrowth of the reform work of Pestalozzi on the one hand, and the
new social, political, economic, and industrial forces of a modern world
on the other.
The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed a century of bitter and
vindictive religious warfare, was followed by another century of hatred,
suspicion, and narrow religious intolerance and reaction. All parties now
adopted an extremely conservative attitude in matters of religion and
education, and the protection of orthodoxy became the chief purpose of the
school. Reading, religion, a little counting and writing, and, in Teutonic
lands, music, came to constitute the curriculum of such elementary
vernacular schools as had come to exist, and the religious Primer and the
Bible became the great school textbooks. The people were poor, much of
Europe was impoverished and depopulated as a result of long-continued
religious strife, the common people still occupied a very low social
position, there were as yet no qualified teachers, and no need for general
education aside from religion. Still more, during more than a thousand
years the Church had established the tradition of providing free
education, and when the governing authorities of the States which turned
to Protestantism had taken from the Church both the opportunity to
continue the schools and the wealth with which to maintain them, they were
seldom willing to tax themselves to set up institutions to continue the
work formerly done gratis by the Church. In consequence, regardless of
Protestant educational theory as to the need for general education, but
little progress in providing vernacular schools was made during the whole
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Here and there in Teutonic lands, however, the new studies found an
occasional patron. In 1619 schools were organized for the little Duchy of
Weimar (p. 317) by a pupil of Ratke, and sense realism was given a place
in them. The schoolmaster, Andreas Reyher, who in 1642 drew up the _Schule
Methodus_ "the actual title of that book was 'Schulmethodus" for Duke
Ernest of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg, was familiar with the work of both
Ratke and Comenius, and made provision for instruction in "the natural and
useful sciences" (R. 163) for Duke Ernest's children. Here and there a few
other attempts to provide schools and add instruction in the new _Realien_
were made. The number of such attempts was not large, but their work was
influential, and as a result vernacular schools and science instruction
finally became established among German-speaking peoples before they did
in any other land.
THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The influence of Milton's _Tractate_ on the non-
conformist Academies of England has been traced, and the transfer of the
idea of instruction in the new mathematical, scientific, literary,
historical, and political subjects to the new American Academies has been
mentioned. That these new studies also entered into the education of a
gentleman in England and France, under the private-tutor and the courtly-
academy system, and were copied from the French and constituted a large
part of the instruction organized for the _Ritterakademieen_ of the
numerous court cities in German lands, has also been mentioned. In both
England and France such private instruction exerted but little influence
on the existing Latin grammar schools, and in consequence the schools of
both countries remained largely unchanged in direction and purpose until
the second half of the nineteenth century. In German lands the
_Ritterakademieen_ idea experienced a further development, which proved to
be of large importance for the future of German education.
FRANCKE'S "INSTITUTIONS." With the introduction of French ideas and
training into the German courts, French skepticism in matters of religion
developed in the court circles. Under the influence of a pious Lutheran
clergyman, Philip Spener (1635-1705), who tried to emphasize religion as
an affair of the heart rather than the head; and especially as a result of
the work of his spiritual successor, Augustus Hermann Francke, a movement
arose in German lands, during the closing years of the seventeenth
century, which became known as _Pietism_. [10] Disgusted with the lifeless
and insincere religion of the time, these two strove to substitute a
religion of both head and heart. In 1695, moved by pity for the poor,
Francke established at Halle the first of his famous "Institutions,"--a
school for poor children. A pay school for the well-to-do was soon added,
and soon another school for the children of nobility. An orphan school
also was in time provided. The school for the poor developed into a
vernacular or _Burgher_ (_volks_; peoples) school; the school for the pay
pupils into a Latin School, or _Gymnasium_; and the school for nobles into
a higher scientific school, or _Paedagogium_ as it was called. At first
Francke encountered some theological opposition, but the "Institutions"
prospered, and at the time of his death contained over 2200 pupils, and
over 300 teachers, workers, and attendants.
[Illustration: FIG. 128. AUGUSTUS HERMANN FRANCKE (1663-1727)]
The interesting thing about Francke's work was the courses of instruction
he provided for his schools. [11] In the Burgher School he gave the
children instruction in history, geography, and animal life, in addition
to the reading, writing, counting, music, and religion of the usual German
vernacular school. Into the _Gymnasium_ he introduced instruction in
history, geography, music, science, and mathematics, in addition to the
usual Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He also changed the purpose of the
language instruction. Greek was studied to be able to read the New
Testament in the original, and Hebrew better to understand the Old. The
_Paedagogium_ was provided with a botanical garden, a cabinet of natural
history, physical apparatus, a laboratory for the study of chemistry and
anatomy, and a workshop for turning and glass-cutting. Independent of the
work of Comenius, but as an outgrowth of the new movement for the study of
science now beginning to influence educational thought, we have here the
most important attempt at the introduction into the school of sense
realism, or _Realien_, as the Germans say, that the modern world had so
far witnessed. In 1697 Francke added a _Seminarium Praeceptorium_, to
train teachers in his new ideas. This was the first teachers' training-
school in German lands, and the teachers he trained served to scatter his
educational ideas over the German States. [12]
THE FIRST REALSCHULE. Associated with Francke as a teacher was one
Christopher Semler (1669-1740), who became deeply interested in the new
studies of the secondary school. In 1706 Semler had submitted a plan to
the government of Magdeburg for the teaching of the practical studies.
This was referred to the Berlin Society of Sciences, which approved the
plan, and later elected Semler to membership in the Society. For years
Semler continued as a teacher at Halle, but without carrying the idea far
enough to create a new type of school. In 1739 Semler published a paper
"Upon the Mathematical, Mechanical, and Agricultural Real School in the
City of Halle," in which he described the instruction given there. This
was probably the first use of the term "real school" (Realschule). The
important subjects described as taught, aside from religion, were "the
useful and in daily life wholly indispensable sciences," such as
mathematics, drawing, geography, history, natural history, agriculture,
and economics, with much emphasis on observation by the pupils.
The work at Halle soon stimulated complaints as to the existing Latin
schools, where children, destined for business or the service of the
State, were kept trying to learn Latin, "to the neglect of more practical
and more useful studies." The usefulness of the new real studies now began
to be more correctly estimated, and the conviction gradually grew that
those boys who were destined for trade--now a rapidly increasing number--
should not be obliged to follow the same course as those destined to be
scholars. In 1720 Rector Gesner, of the gymnasium at Rotenburg, wrote,
rather sarcastically:
The one class, who will not study, but will become tradesmen,
merchants, or soldiers, must be instructed in writing, arithmetic,
writing letters, geography, description of the world, and history. The
other class may be trained for studying.
In 1742 the Rector at Dresden, Schoettgen, issued a "Humble proposal for
the special class in public city schools" to provide for those children
"who are to remain without (that is, cannot learn) Latin." Instead of
forcing them to attempt to learn Donatus, which he said was useless for
them, he urged that a special class (school) be organized to train them to
become useful merchants, artists, and mechanics. In 1751 Rector Henzky, of
Prenzlau, issued a treatise to show "That Real schools can and must become
common." In 1756 Gesner, professor at the new University of Goettingen, in
a pamphlet "On the organization of a gymnasium" (R. 223), urged that there
were three classes of youths for whom schools should be provided, one of
which needed the _Realschule_.
In 1747 a clergyman by the name of Julius Hecker (1707-1768), who had been
a pupil in, and later had taught in Francke's "'Institutions," went to
Berlin and opened there the first distinct German _Realschule_. In this
school Hecker provided instruction in religion, ethics, German, French,
Latin, mathematics, drawing, history, geography, mechanics, architecture,
and a knowledge of nature and of the human body. Classes were organized in
architecture, agriculture, bookkeeping, manufacturing, and mining. The
school prospered from the first, and in time became the "Royal
_Realschule_" of Berlin. In answer to a growing demand for advanced
education for that constantly increasing number of youths destined for the
trades or a mercantile career, the _realschule_ idea was copied in a
number of the important cities of Germany. Thus early--a century in
advance of other nations, and a century and a quarter ahead of the United
States--did Prussia lay the foundations of that scientific and technical
education which, later on, did so much toward creating modern industrial
Germany.
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEW SCIENTIFIC LEARNING. Though the theological
persecution of scientific workers largely died out after about the middle
of the seventeenth century, and was never much of a factor in lands which
had embraced some form of Protestantism, the new sciences nevertheless
made but little headway in the universities until after the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Up to the close of the seventeenth century the
universities in all lands continued to be dominated by their theological
faculties, and instruction still remained largely encompassed by
mediaevalism. England represents perhaps the most notable exception to
this statement, scientific studies having been received with greater
tolerance by the universities there than in other lands. In both Catholic
and Protestant lands the need was felt for orthodox training, through fear
of further heresy, and many petty restrictions were thrown about study and
teaching which were stifling to free thinking and investigation. Each
little Kingdom or State now took over the supervision of some old
university within its borders, or established a new one, that it might
more completely control orthodoxy and prepare its own civil servants. Of
the seventeenth century, Paulsen [13] well says:
It was essentially the period of the territorial-confessional
university, and is characterized by a preponderance of theological-
confessional interest.... Many new foundations, both Catholic and
Protestant, now appeared. The chief impetus leading to these numerous
foundations was the accentuation of the principle of territorial
sovereignty, from the ecclesiastical as well as the political point of
view. The consequence was that the universities began to be
_instrumentia denominationis_ of the government as professional
schools for its ecclesiastical and secular officials. Each individual
government endeavored to secure its own university in order--(1) to
make sure of wholesome instruction, which meant, of course,
instruction in harmony with the confessional standards of its
established church; (2) to retain training of its secular officials in
its own hands; and finally (3) render attendance at foreign
universities unnecessary on the part of its subjects, and thus keep
the money in the country.
Large amounts of money were not needed to establish a new university. A
few thousand guilders or thalers sufficed for the salaries of ten or
fifteen professors, a couple of preachers and physicians would undertake
the theological and medical lectures, and some old monastery would supply
the needed buildings.
After the Reformation the law faculty increased to the place of first
importance in Protestant lands, because the Reformation had created a new
demand for judges and higher court officials to replace the rule of the
clergy. The medical faculty continued to be, as in the mediaeval
universities, the smallest of all the faculties and amounted to little
before the nineteenth century. [14] The arts faculty, or philosophical as
it came to be termed in German lands, offered lectures in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, and a general course in philosophy, but the Aristotelian texts
and to some extent mediaeval methods in instruction continued to be used
until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Here and there some professor "read" on mathematics, and in Protestant
lands on the new astronomy, and the study of botany began as the study of
herbs in the medical faculty, [15] but during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries few professors or students were interested in the
scientific subjects. By 1675 Bacon's _Novum Organum_ had begun to be
taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and by 1700 the Newtonian physics had
begun to displace Aristotle at Oxford. By 1740 it was well established
there. At first instruction in the new subjects was offered as an extra
and for a fee by men not having professional rank (R. 224), and later the
instruction was given full recognition by the university. By 1700
Cambridge had become a center for mathematical study (R. 225), and with
the growth in popularity of the Newtonian philosophy, mathematical studies
there took the place held by logic in the mediaeval university. Cambridge
has ever since remained a center for mathematical and, since the beginning
of the nineteenth century, for scientific studies as well. Between 1680
and 1700 the University of Paris was reformed, and the mathematical and
philosophical studies of Descartes (p. 394) began to be taught there. The
universities of the Netherlands began to teach the new mathematical and
scientific studies even earlier.
Aside from the above described _Realschule_ development, the new
scientific movement for a time largely passed over German lands, and in
consequence the German universities remained unreformed until the
eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century they sank to their
lowest intellectual level. In 1694, largely in protest against the
narrowness of the old universities, the new University of Halle was
founded. It received into its faculty certain forward-looking men who had
been driven from the old universities, [16] and is generally considered as
the first modern university. The new scientific and mathematical subjects
and a reformed philosophy were introduced; the instruction in Greek and
Latin was reformed; German was made the medium of classroom instruction;
and a scientific magazine in German was begun. In 1737 the University of
Goettingen became a second center of modern influence, and from these two
institutions the new scientific spirit gradually spread to all the
Protestant universities of German lands. A century later they were the
leading universities of the world.
THE TRANSITION NOW PRACTICALLY COMPLETE. From the time Petrarch made his
first "find" at Liege (1333), in the form of two previously unknown
orations of Cicero (p. 244), to the publication of the _Principia_ (p.
388) of Newton (1687), is a period of approximately three and a half
centuries. During these three and a half centuries a complete
transformation of world-life had been effected, and the mediaeval man,
with his eyes on the past, had given place to the modern man with his eyes
on the future. During these three and a half centuries revolutionary
forces had been at work in the world of ideas, and the transition from
mediaeval to modern attitudes had been accomplished. From 1333 to 1433 was
the century of "literary finds," and during this period the monastic
treasures were brought to light and edited and the classical literature of
Rome restored. Greek also was restored to the western world, and a
reformed Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given the place of first importance
in the new humanistic school. The invention of printing took place in
1423; 1456 witnessed the appearance of the first printed book, and the
perfection of the new means for the multiplication of books and the
dissemination of ideas. Before 1500 the great era of geographical
discovery had been inaugurated; a sea-route to India was found in 1487;
and a new continent in 1492. In 1519-22 Magellan's ships rounded the
world.
In 1517 Luther issued the challenge, the shock of which was felt in every
corner of Christian Europe, and within a half-century much of northern and
western Europe had been lost to the original Roman Church. Soon
independence in thinking had been extended to the problem of the
organization of the universe, and in 1543 Copernicus issued the book that
clearly marks the beginning of modern scientific thinking and inquiry.
Bacon had done his organizing work by 1620, and Newton's _Principia_
(1687) finally established modern scientific thought and work. Comenius
died in 1671, his great organizing work done, and his textbooks, with
their many new educational ideas, in use all over Europe. The mediaeval
attitude still continued in religion and government, but the world as a
whole had left mediaeval attitudes behind it, and was facing the future of
modern world organization and life. To the educational organization of
this modern world we now turn, though before doing so we shall try to
present a cross-section, as it were, of the development in educational
theory and practice which had been attained by about the middle of the
eighteenth century.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Explain why the scholars of the time were so intent on producing a new
race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world.
2. Show that a reaction against humanism was certain to arise, and why.
3. How do you explain the very small influence exerted on the Latin
grammar schools of England by the non-conformist Academies, after they had
been absorbed into the existing English non-state system of higher
schools?
4. Compare Milton and Montaigne.
5. What would be the most probable effect on education of the erection of
the polished-man-of-the-world ideal?
6. Enumerate the forces favoring and opposing the change of the language
of instruction from Latin to the vernacular.
7. How many of the thirteen principles of the Innovators do we still hold
to be valid?
8. Just what was new in the nine fundamental rules laid down by Ratke, in
his _Methodus Nova_?
9. What is your estimate of the vernacular schools as outlined by
Comenius? Of the plans for a gymnasium at Saros-Patak?
10. Compare Comenius' Latin school with the College of Calvin.
11. State the new ideas in instruction embodied in the textbooks of
Comenius.
12. Show that Comenius dominates modern educational ideas, even though his
work was largely lost, in the same way that Petrarch or Wyclifle or
Copernicus do modern work in their fields.
13. Explain the very slow development of vernacular schools after the
Protestant Revolts.
14. Why would the introduction of real studies into them be especially
slow?
15. What explanation can you offer for the much earlier beginnings in
scientific instruction in German lands than in England or America, when
much more of the important early scientific work was done by Englishmen
than by Germans? and the failure of science for a time to find a home in
the German universities?
16. Explain the continued dominance of the theological faculty in the
universities of the seventeenth century.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative
selections are reproduced:
210. Rabelais: On the Nature of Education.
211. Milton: The Aim and Purpose of Education.
212. Milton: His Program for Study.
213. Adamson: Discontent of the Nobility with the Schools.
214. Montaigne: Ridicule of the Humanistic Pedants.
215. Montaigne: His Conception of Education.
216. Locke: Extracts from his Thoughts on Education.
217. Locke: Plan for Working Schools for Poor Children.
218. Comenius: Title-Page of the _Great Didactic_.
219. Comenius: Contents of the _Great Didactic_.
220. Comenius: Plan for the Gymnasium at Saros-Patak.
221. Comenius: Sample pages from the _Orbis Pictus_.
(a) A page from a Latin-German edition of 1740.
(b) Two pages from a Latin-English edition of 1727.
(c) A page from the New York edition of 1810.
222. Butler: Place of Comenius in the History of Education.
223. Gesner: Need for _Realschulen_ for the New Classes to be
Educated.
224. Handbill: How the Scientific Studies began at Cambridge.
225. Green: Cambridge Scheme of Study of 1707.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Show that Rabelais was in close sympathy with the best of the new
humanists of his age.
2. Would Milton's definition of the purpose of education be true, still?
3. Show from Milton's program of studies that he represents a transition
type, and also that his program contains the nucleus of the more modern
studies of the secondary school.
4. Explain the discontent of the nobility with the existing Church
schools.
5. Assuming Montaigne's description of the education of his time to be
true, explain why this might naturally be the case.
6. Just what kind of an education does Montaigne outline, and how great a
reaction was this from existing conditions?
7. In how far would Locke's ideas still apply to the education of a boy of
the leisure class?
8. Show that Locke's plan for work-house schools was in thorough accord
with English post-Reformation ideas as to the duty of the State in matters
of education, and also that it contained the beginnings of the pauper-
school idea of education which we later had to combat.
9. From the title-page and the table of contents (219) of Comenius' _Great
Didactic_, point out the originality and novelty of his ideas.
10. Compare Comenius' plan for the Saros-Patak _Gymnasium_ with such
schools as Sturm's, the college of Guyenne, the college of Calvin, and the
Jesuits.
11. Compare Comenius' plan (220) with the instruction in an American high
school of seventy-five years ago.
12. Compare the Alphabet page of Comenius' _Orbis Pictus_ with the same
page in the New England Primer.
13. When so many educational reforms were inaugurated so early by
Comenius, explain their neglect, and our having to work them out anew in
the nineteenth century.
14. What does the need for _Realschulen_ indicate as to the evolution of
German society and the recuperation from the ravages of war?
15. Compare the beginnings of scientific study at Cambridge with
beginnings of new subjects to-day in our schools.
16. Just what does the Cambridge Scheme of Study indicate as being taught
there?
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Adamson, J. W. _Pioneers of Modern Education, 1600-1700_.
Barnard, Henry. _German Teachers and Educators_.
* Butler, N. M. "The Place of Comenius in the History of Education": in
_Proc. N. E. A._, 1892, pp. 723-28.
Browning, Oscar, Editor. _Milton's Tractate on Education_.
* Comenius, J. A. _Orbis Pictus_ (Bardeen; Syracuse).
Hanus, Paul H. "The Permanent Influence of Comenius"; in _Educational
Review_, vol. 3, pp. 226-36 (March, 1892).
Laurie, S. S. _History of Educational Opinion since the
Renaissance_.
* Laurie, S. S. _John Amos Comenius_.
Quick, R. H., Editor. _Locke's Thoughts on Education_.
* Quick, R. H. _Essays on Educational Reformers_.
* Vostrovsky, Clara. "A European School of the Time of Comenius (Prague,
1609)"; in _Education_, vol. 17, pp. 356-60 (February, 1897.)
Wordsworth, Christopher. _Scholae Academicae; Studies at the English
Universities in the Eighteenth Century_.
CHAPTER XVIII
THEORY AND PRACTICE BY THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
We have now reached, in our history of the transition age which began with
the Revival of Learning--the great events of which were the recovery of
the ancient learning, the rediscovery of the historic past, the
reawakening of scholarship, and the rise of religious and scientific
inquiry--the end of the transition period, and we are now ready to pass to
a study of the development and progress of education in modern times.
Before doing so, however, we desire to gather up and state the progress in
both educational theory and practice which had been attained by the end of
this transition period, and to present, as it were, a cross-section of
education at about the middle of the eighteenth century. To do this, then,
before passing to a consideration of educational development in modern
times, will be the purpose of this chapter. We shall first review the
progress made in evolving a theory as to the educational purpose, and then
present a cross-section view of the schools of the time under
consideration.
I. PRE-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL THEORIES
THE STATE PURPOSE OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. As we saw, early in our study
of the rise and progress of the education of peoples, the City-States of
Greece were the first consciously to evolve a systematic plan of schooling
and a prolonged course of training for those who were to guide and direct
the State. In Sparta the training was almost wholly for military
efficiency and tribal safety, but in Athens we found a people using a
well-worked-out system of training to develop individual initiative,
advance civilization, and promote the welfare of the State. The education
provided was for but a class, to be sure, and a small ruling class at
that, but it was the first evidence of the new western, individualistic,
and democratic spirit expressing itself in the education of the young.
There also we found, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply
concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing
education as a necessity to make life worth living and to secure the State
from dangers, both without and within. The training there given produced
wonderful results, and for two centuries the men educated by it ably
guided the destinies of Athens.
The essentials of this Greek training were later embodied in the private-
adventure school system that arose in Rome, which was adapted to
conditions and needs there, and which was used for the training of a few
Roman youths of the wealthier families for a political career. Schooling
at Rome, though, never attained the importance or rendered the service
that characterized education at Athens, and never became an instrument of
the State used consciously for State ends. One Roman writer, Quintilian,
as we have seen (R. 25), worked out a careful statement of the whole
process of educating a youth for a public career, and this, the first
practical treatise on education, was for long highly prized as the best-
written statement of the educational art.
THE FUTURE-LIFE CONCEPTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. With the decline of Roman
power and influence, and the victory of Christianity throughout the Roman
world, the State conception of education was entirely lost to western
Europe, and more than a thousand years elapsed before it again arose in
the western world. The Church now became the State, and the need for any
education for secular life almost entirely passed away. For centuries the
aim was almost entirely a preparation for life in the world to come.
Throughout all the early Middle Ages this attitude continued, supplemented
only by the meager education of a few to carry on the work of the Church
here below.
After the tenth century we noted the rise of some more or less independent
study in some of the monastery and cathedral schools, and after the
twelfth century the rise of _studia generalia_ marked the congregation
into groups of the few interested in a studious life. These in turn gave
rise to the university foundations, and to the beginning of independent
and secular study once more in the western world. The Revival of Learning,
the recovery of the ancient manuscripts, the revival of the study of Greek
in the West, the founding of libraries, the invention of paper and
printing, and the revival of trade and commerce--all were new forces
tending to give a new direction to scholarly study, and as a result a new
race of scholars, more or less independent of the Church, now arose in
western Europe. They were, however, a class, and a very small class at
that, and though the result of their work was the creation of a new
humanistic secondary school, this still ministered to the needs of but a
few. This few was intended either for the service of the Church, for the
governmental service of the towns which had by this time attained their
independence, or for the governments of the rising principalities or
states.
For the great mass of the people, whose purpose in life was to work and
believe and obey, agriculture, warfare, the rising trades with their
guilds (p. 209), and the services of the Church constituted almost all in
the way of education which they ever received. To be useful to his
overlord and master here and to be saved hereafter were the chief life-
purposes of the common man. The former he must himself undertake in order
to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to
those who followed her teachings.
THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in
history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the
Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary
religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal _versus_
collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education
of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. The aim was
the same as before--personal salvation--but the method was now changed
from that of the Church as intermediary to personal knowledge and faith
and effort. To be saved, one must know something of the Word of God, and
this necessitated instruction. To this end, in theory at least, schools
had to be established to educate the young for membership in the new type
of Church relationship. Reading the vernacular, a little counting and
writing, in Teutonic countries a little music, and careful instruction in
a religious Primer (R. 202), the Catechism, and the Bible, now came to
constitute the subject matter of a new vernacular school for the children
of Protestants, and to a certain extent in time for the children of
Catholics as well. As we pointed out earlier (p. 353), between this new
type of school for religious ends and the older Latin grammar school for
scholarly purposes there was almost no relationship, and the two developed
wholly independently of one another. In the Latin grammar schools one
studied to become a scholar and a leader in the political or
ecclesiastical world; in the vernacular religious school one learned to
read that he 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
to the maintenance of the elementary vernacular schools. This condition
continued until well into the eighteenth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 129. A FRENCH SCHOOL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
(After an etching by Boisseau, 1730-1809)]
EARLY UNSUCCESSFUL EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. Back in the seventeenth century,
as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, a very earnest effort was
made by Ratke and Comenius to introduce a larger conception of the
educational process into the elementary vernacular school, to eliminate
the gloomy religious material from the textbooks, to substitute a human-
welfare purpose for the exclusively life-beyond view, and to transform the
school into an institution for imparting both learning and religion.
Comenius in particular hoped to make of the new elementary religious
school a potent instrument for human progress by introducing new subject-
matter, and by formulating laws and developing methods for its work which
would be in harmony with the new scientific procedure so well stated by
Francis Bacon. Comenius stands as the commanding figure in seventeenth-
century pedagogical thought. He reasoned out and introduced us to the
whole modern conception of the educational process and purpose, and gave
to the school of the people a solid theoretical and practical basis.
Living, though, at an unfortunate period in human history, he was able to
awaken little interest either in rational teaching-method or in reforms
looking to the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Instead he roused
suspicion and distrust by the innovations and progressive reforms he
proposed; his now-celebrated book on teaching method (Rs. 218, 219) was
not at the time understood and was for long forgotten, while the
fundamentally sound ideas and pedagogical reforms which he proposed and
introduced were lost amid the hatreds of his time, and had to be worked
out again and reestablished in a later and a more tolerant age.
Another unsuccessful reformer of some importance, and one whose work
antedated that of both Ratke and Comenius, was the London schoolmaster,
Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), for twenty-five years headmaster of the
famous Merchant Taylors' School, and later Master of Saint Paul's School.
In 1581 he issued his _Positions_, a pedagogical work so far in advance of
his time, and written in such a heavy and affected style, that it passed
almost unnoticed in England, and did not become known at all in other
lands. Yet the things he stood for became the fundamental ideas of
nineteenth-century educational thought. These were:
1. That the end and aim of education is to develop the body and the
faculties of the mind, and to help nature to perfection.
2. That all teaching processes should be adapted to the pupil taught.
3. That the first stage in learning is of large importance, and
requires high skill on the part of the teacher.
4. That the thing to be learned is of less importance than the pupil
learning.
5. That proper brain development demands that pressure and one-sided
education alike be avoided.
6. That the mother tongue should be taught first and well, and should
be the language of the school from six to twelve.
7. That music and drawing should be taught.
8. That reading and writing at least should be the common right of
all, and that girls should be given equal opportunity with boys.
9. That training colleges for teachers should be established and
maintained.
The modern nature of many of Mulcaster's proposals may be seen from the
table of contents of his volume (R. 226). Mulcaster, like Comenius,
thought far in advance of his age, and in consequence his book was soon
and for long forgotten. Yet what Quick [1] says of him is very true:
It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been
followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of the
use of the vernacular instead of Latin, and good reading and writing
in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary
course included five things: English reading, English writing,
drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If this were made to
occupy the school time up to twelve, Mulcaster held that more would be
done between twelve and sixteen than between seven and seventeen in
the ordinary (Latin grammar school) way. There would be a further gain
in that the children would not be set against learning.
John Locke, and the disciplinary theory of education. Another commanding
figure in seventeenth-century pedagogical thought was the English scholar,
philosopher, teacher, physician, and political writer, John Locke (1632-
1704). In the preceding chapter we pointed out the place of Locke as a
writer on the education of the sons of the English gentry, and illustrated
by an extract from his _Thoughts_ (R. 216) the importance he placed on
such a practical type of education as would prepare a gentleman's son for
the social and political demands of a world fast becoming modern. Locke's
place in the history of education, though, is of much more importance than
was there (p. 402) indicated. Locke was essentially the founder of modern
psychology, based on the application of the methods of modern scientific
investigation to a study of the mind, [2] and he is also of importance in
the history of educational thought as having set forth, at some length and
with much detail, the disciplinary conception of the educational process.
Locke had served as a tutor in an English nobleman's family, had worked
out his educational theories in practice and thought them through as mind
processes, and had become thoroughly convinced that it was the process of
learning that was important, rather than the thing learned. Education to
him was a process of disciplining the body, fixing good habits, training
the youth in moral situations, and training the mind through work with
studies selected because of their disciplinary value. This conception of
education he sets forth well in the following paragraph, taken from his
_Thoughts:_
The great Work of the Governor is to fashion the Carriage and form the
Mind; to settle in his Pupils good Habits and the Principles of Virtue
and Wisdom; to give him by little and little a View of Mankind, and
work him into a Love and Imitation of what is excellent and
praiseworthy; and in the Prosecution of it, to give him Vigor,
Activity, and Industry. The Studies which he sets him upon, are but as
it were the Exercise of his Faculties, and Employment of his Time, to
keep him from Sauntering and Idleness, to teach him Application, and
accustom him to take Pains, and to give him some little Taste of what
his own Industry must perfect (sec 94).
In his _Thoughts_ Locke first sets forth at length the necessity for
disciplining the body by means of diet, exercise, and the hardening
process. "A sound mind in a sound body" he conceives to be "a short but
full description of a happy state in this world," and a fundamental basis
for morality and learning. The formation of good habits and manners
through proper training, and the proper adjustment of punishments and
rewards next occupies his attention, and he then explains his theory as to
making all punishments the natural consequences of acts. Similarly the
mind, as the body, must be disciplined to virtue by training the child to
deny, subordinate desires, and apply reason to acts. The formation of good
habits and the disciplining of the desires Locke regards as the
foundations of virtue. On this point he says:
As the Strength of the Body lies chiefly in being able to endure
Hardship, so also does that of the Mind. And the great Principle and
Foundation of all Virtue and Worth is plac'd in this:--That a Man is
able to _deny himself_ his own Desires, cross his own
Inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as best, tho' the
Appetite lean the other Way (sec 33).
Similarly, in intellectual education, good thinking and the employment of
reason is the aim, and these, too, must be attained through the proper
discipline of the mind. Good intellectual education does not consist
merely in studying and learning, he contends, as was the common practice
in the grammar schools of his time, but must be achieved by a proper
drilling of the powers of the mind through the use of selected studies.
The purpose of education, he holds, is above all else to make man a
reasoning creature. Nothing, in his judgment, trains to reason closely so
well as the study of mathematics, though Locke would have his boy "look
into all sorts of knowledge," and train his understanding with a wide
variety of exercises. In the education given in the grammar schools of his
time he found much that seemed to him wasteful of time and thoroughly bad
in principle, and he used much space to point out defects and describe
better methods of teaching and management, giving in some detail reasons
therefor. His ideas as to needed reforms in the teaching of Latin (R. 227)
are illustrative.
LOCKE ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. For the beginnings of education, and for
elementary education in general, Locke sticks close to the prevailing
religious conception of his time. As for the education of the common
people, he writes:
The knowledge of the Bible and the business of his own calling is
enough for the ordinary man; a Gentleman ought to go further.
Continuing regarding the beginnings of education and the studies and
textbooks of his day, he says:
The Lord's Prayer, the Creeds, and the Ten Commandments, 't is
necessary he should learn perfectly by heart.... What other Books
there are in _English_ of the Kind of those above-mentioned
(besides the Primer) fit to engage the Liking of Children, and tempt
them to _read_, I do not know;... and nothing that I know has
been considered of this Kind out of the ordinary Road of the Horn
Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible (sec 157).
Locke does, however, give some very sensible suggestions as to the reading
of the Bible (R. 228), the imparting of religious ideas to children, and
the desirability of transforming instruction so as to make it pleasant and
agreeable, with plenty of natural playful activity. [3] On this point he
writes:
He that has found a Way how to keep up a Child's Spirit easy, active,
and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many Things he
has a Mind to, and to draw him to Things that are uneasy to him; he, I
say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in
my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education (sec 46).
INFLUENCE OF LOCKE'S _THOUGHTS_. The volume by Locke contains much that is
sensible in the matter of educating a boy. The emphasis on habit
formation, reasoning, physical activities and play, the individuality of
children, and a reformed method in teaching are its strong points. The
thoroughly modern character of the book, in most respects, is one of its
marked characteristics. The volume seems to have been much read by middle
and upper-class Englishmen, and copies of it have been found in so many
old colonial collections that it was probably well known among early
eighteenth-century American colonists. That the book had an important
influence on the attitude of the higher social classes of England toward
the education of their sons and, consciously or unconsciously, in time
helped to redirect the teaching in that most characteristic of English
educational institutions, the English Public (Latin Grammar) School, seems
to be fairly clear. On elementary religious and charity-school education
it had practically no influence.
Locke's great influence on educational thought did not come, though, for
nearly three quarters of a century afterward, and it came then through the
popularization of his best ideas by Rousseau. Karl Schmidt [4] well says
of his work:
Locke is a thorough Englishman, and the principle underlying his education
is the principle according to which the English people have developed.
Hence his theory of education has in the history of pedagogy the same
value that the English nation has in the history of the world. He stood in
strong opposition to the scholastic and formalized education current in
his time, a living protest against the prevailing pedantry; in the
universal development of pedagogy he gives impulse to the movement which
grounds education upon sound psychological principles, and lays stress
upon breeding and the formation of character.
Restating and expanding the leading ideas of Locke in his _Emile_ (chapter
XXI), and putting them into far more attractive literary form, Rousseau
scattered Locke's ideas as to educational reform over Europe. In
particular Rousseau popularized Locke's ideas as to the replacement of
authority by reason and investigation, his emphasis on physical activity
and health, his contention that the education of children should be along
lines that were natural and normal for children, and above all Locke's
plea for education through the senses rather than the memory. In so
popularizing Locke's ideas, and at a time when all the political
tendencies of the period were in the direction of the rejection of
authority and the emphasis of the individual, those educational reformers
who were inspired by the writings of Rousseau created and applied, largely
on the foundations laid down by John Locke, a new theory as to educational
aims and procedure which dominated all early nineteenth-century
instruction. This we shall trace further in a subsequent chapter (chapter
XXI).
It was at this point that the educational problem stood, in so far as a
theory as to educational aims and the educational process was concerned,
when Rousseau took it up (1762). Before passing to a consideration of his
work, though, and the work of those inspired by him and by the French
revolutionary writers and statesmen, let us close this third part of our
history by a brief survey of the development so far attained, the purpose,
character, aims, and nature of instruction in the schools, and their means
of support and control at about the middle of the century in which
Rousseau wrote, and before the philosophical and political revolutions of
the latter half of the eighteenth century had begun to influence
educational aims and procedure and control.
II. MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS
THE PURPOSE. The purpose of maintaining the elementary vernacular school,
in all European lands, remained at the middle of the eighteenth century
much as it was a century before, though in the German States and in the
American Colonies there was a noticeable shifting of emphasis from the
older exclusively religious purpose toward a newer conception of education
as preparation for life in the world here. Still, one learned to read
chiefly "to learn some orthodox Catechism," "to read fluently in the New
Testament," and to know the will of God, or, as stated in the law of the
Connecticut Colony (R. 193), "in some competent measure to understand the
main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation."
The teacher was still carefully looked after as to his "soundness in the
faith" (R. 238 a); he was required "to catechise his scholars in the
principles of the Christian religion," and "to commend his labors amongst
them unto God by prayer morning and evening, [5] taking care that his
scholars do reverently attend during the same." The minister in
practically all lands examined the children as to their knowledge of the
Catechism and the Bible, and on his visits quizzed them as to the Sunday
sermon. In Boston (1710) the ministers were required, on their school
visits, to pray with the pupils, and "to entertain them with some
instructions of piety adapted to their age." In Church-of-England schools
"the End and Chief Design" of the schools established continued to be
instruction in "the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion as
Professed and Taught in the Church of England" (R. 238 b). In German lands
the elementary vernacular school was still regarded as "the portico of the
Temple," "Christianity its principal work," and not as "mere
establishments preparatory to public life, but be pervaded by the
religious spirit." [6] The uniform system of public schools ordered
established for Prussia by Frederick the Great, in 1763, were after all
little more than religious schools (R. 274), conducted for purposes of
both Church and State. As Frederick expressed it, "we find it necessary
and wholesome to have a good foundation laid in the schools by a rational
and a Christian education of the young for the fear of God, and other
useful ends." In the schools of La Salle's organization, which was most
prominent in elementary vernacular education in Catholic France, the aim
continued to be (R. 182) "to teach them to live honestly and uprightly, by
instructing them in the principles of our holy religion and by teaching
them Christian precepts."
WEAKENING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS THEORY. By the middle of the eighteenth
century, however, there is a noticeable weakening of the hold of the old
religious theory on the schools in most Protestant lands. In England there
was a marked relaxation of the old religious intolerance in educational
matters as the century proceeded, and new textbooks, embodying but little
of the old gloomy religious material, appeared and began to be used. By a
series of decisions, between 1670 and 1701 (chapter XXIV), the English
courts broke the hold of the bishops in the matter of the licensing of
elementary schoolmasters, and by the Acts of 1713 and 1714 the Dissenters
were once more allowed to conduct schools of their own. Coincident with
this growth of religious tolerance among the English we find the Church of
England redoubling its efforts to hold the children of its adherents, by
the organization of parish schools and the creation of a vast system of
charitable religious schools. In German lands, too, a marked shifting of
emphasis away from solely religious ends and toward the needs of the
government began, toward the end of the eighteenth century, to be evident.
In Wuertemberg, which was somewhat typical of late eighteenth-century
action by other German States, a Circular of the General Synod, of
November 1787, declares the German schools to be "those nurseries in which
should be taught the true and genuine idea of the duties of men--created
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