The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS

I. AMONG LUTHERANS AND ANGLICANS

ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE BREAK WITH AUTHORITY. That the Protestant Revolts in the different lands produced large immediate and permanent changes in the character of the education provided in the revolting States is no longer accepted as being the case. In every phase of educational history growth has proceeded by evolution rather than by revolution, and this applies to the Protestant Revolts as well as to other revolutions.

Many changes naturally resulted at once, some of which were good and some of which were not, while others which were enthusiastically attempted failed of results because they involved too great advances for the time.

Much, too, of the progress that was inaugurated was lost in the more than a century of religious strife which followed, and the additional century and more of suspicion, hatred, religious formalism, and strict religious conformity which followed the period of religious strife. The educational significance of the reformation movement, though, lies in the far-reaching nature of its larger results and ultimate consequences rather than in its immediate accomplishments, and because of this the importance of the immediate changes effected have been overestimated by Protestants and underestimated by Catholics.

The dominant idea underlying Luther’s break with authority, and for that matter the revolts of Wycliffe, Huss, Zwingli, and Calvin as well, was that of substituting the authority of the Bible in religious matters for the authority of the Church; of substituting individual judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures and in formulating decisions as to Christian duty for the collective judgment of the Church; and of substituting individual responsibility for salvation, in Luther’s conception of justification through personal faith and prayer, for the collective responsibility for salvation of the Church. [1] Whether one believes that the Protestant position was sound or not depends almost entirely upon one’s religious training and beliefs, and need not concern us here, as it makes no difference with the course of history. We can believe either way, and the course that history took remains the same. The educational consequences of the position taken by the Protestants, though, are important.

Under the older theory of collective judgment and collective responsibility for salvation—that is, the judgment of the Church rather than that of individuals—it was not important that more than a few be educated. Under the new theory of individual judgment and individual responsibility promulgated by the Protestants it became very important, in theory at least, that every one should be able to read the word of God, participate intelligently in the church services, and shape his life as he understood was in accordance with the commandments of the Heavenly Father.

This undoubtedly called for the education of all. Still more, from individual participation in the services of the Church, with freedom of judgment and personal responsibility in religious matters, to individual participation in and responsibility for the conduct of government was not a long step, and the rise of democratic governments and the provision of universal education were the natural and ultimate corollaries, though not immediately attained of the Protestant position regarding the interpretation of the Scriptures and the place and authority of the Church. This was soon seen and acted upon. The great struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in consequence, became one for religious freedom and toleration; the great struggle of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been for political freedom and political rights; to supply universal education has been left to the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.

SCHOOLS AND LEARNING BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. After the rise of the universities, as we have seen, many Latin secondary schools were founded in western Europe, and a more extensive development of the cathedral and other larger church schools took place. Rashdall (R. 154) thinks that by 1400 the opportunity to attend a Latin grammar school was rather common, an opinion in which Leach and Nohle concur. After the humanistic learning had spread to northern lands these opportunities were increased and improved. In England, for example, some two hundred and fifty Latin grammar schools are known to have been in existence by 1500. In Germany, as we have seen (chapter xi), many such schools were founded before the time of Luther. These offered a form of advanced education, in the language of the educated classes of the time, for those intending to go to the universities to prepare for service in either Church or State, and for teaching. The Church had also for long maintained or exercised control over a number of types of more elementary schools—parish, song, chantry, hospital (chapter VII)—the chief purpose of which was to prepare for certain phases of the church service, or to enter the secondary schools.

These schools, too, were taught partly or wholly in Latin. In consequence, while Latin schools came to be rather widely diffused, schools in the vernacular hardly existed outside of a few of the larger commercial cities of the north. Even the burgh and guild schools (p. 205), established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were essentially Latin schools.

[Illustration: PLATE 6. EDUCATIONAL LEADERS IN PROTESTANT GERMANY

(From a painting dated 1543, by Lucas Cranach, a German contemporary of both men, and now in the Uffizi Gallery, at Florence) MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)

Professor of Theology at Wittenberg

PHILIPP MELANCHTHON (1497-1560)

Professor of Greek at Wittenberg]

In the commercial cities of the North, however, though often only after quite a struggle with the local church authorities, which throughout the Middle Ages had maintained a monopoly of all instruction as a protection to orthodoxy, different types of elementary vernacular schools had been developed to meet local commercial needs, such as writing-schools to train writers, [2] and reckoning-schools to train young men to handle accounts.

[3] Reading, manners, and religion were also taught in these schools.

Other city schools, largely Latin in type, but containing some vernacular instruction to meet local business needs not met by the cathedral or parish schools of the city, were also developed. Up to the time of the Protestant Revolts, however, there was almost no instruction in the vernacular outside of the commercial cities, nor was there any particular demand for such instruction elsewhere. If one wished to be a scholar, a statesman, a diplomat, a teacher, a churchman, or to join a religious brotherhood, he needed to study the learned language of the time,—Latin.

With this he could be at home with people of his kind anywhere in western Europe. The vernacular he could leave to tradesmen, craftsmen, soldiers, laborers, and the servant classes.

[Illustration: FIG. 92. TWO EARLY VERNACULAR SCHOOLS

GERMAN (From a woodcut, printed at Nuremberg, 1505) FRENCH (After a drawing by Soquand, 1528)]

These people, on the other hand, had practically no need for a written language, aside from a very small amount for business needs. Even here the sign of the cross would do. There were but few books written in the vernacular tongues, and these had to be copied by hand and, in consequence, were scarce and expensive. There were no newspapers (first newspaper, Venice, 1563) or magazines. Spectacles for reading were not known until the end of the thirteenth century, and were not common for two centuries