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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 nonconformist 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 workhouse 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.
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
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