The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗

scholarship, and was in marked contrast with the scholastic methods of the university. In his writings Budaeus set forth for France the dictum that every man, even if he be a king, should be devoted to letters and liberal learning, and that this culture can be obtained only through Greek and Latin, and of these, unlike the Italians, he held Greek to be the more important. Other scholars now helped to transfer the center for Greek scholarship to Paris, where it remained for the next two centuries.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 78. GUILLAUME BUDAEUS (1467-1540)]

 

A royal press was set up in Paris, in 1526, to promote the introduction of the new learning. Libraries were built up, as in Italy. Humanist scholars were made secretaries and ambassadors. The College de France was established at Paris, by direction of the King, with chairs in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics. To Hebrew the Italians had given almost no attention, but in France, and particularly in Germany, Hebrew became an important study. The development of schools in northern France was hindered by the dissensions following the religious revolts of Luther and Calvin, but in southern France many of the cities founded municipal colleges, much like the court schools of northern Italy in type. The work of the city of Bordeaux in reorganizing its town school along the new lines was typical of the work of other southern cities. Good teachers, liberal instruction, and a broad-minded attitude on the part of the governing authorities [3] made this school, known as the Coll�ge de Guyenne, notable not only for humanistic instruction, but for intelligent public education during the second half of the sixteenth century. The picture of this college (school) left us by its greatest principal, Elie Vinet (R. 136), gives an interesting description of its work.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 79. COLL�GE DE FRANCE

Founded at Paris, in 1530, by King Francis I. for instruction in the new humanistic learning]

 

HUMANISM IN GERMANY. The French language and life was closely related to that of northern Italy, and French religious thought had always been so closely in touch with that of Rome that something of the Italian feeling for the old Roman culture and institutions was felt by the humanists of France. In Germany and England no such feeling existed, and in these countries any effort to discredit the rising native languages was much more likely to be regarded as mere pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue as an international language for scholarship, as a potent weapon for destroying barriers of language, religion, law, and possibly in time governments based on nationality, and for the promise it gave of peace in international relationships. In both Germany and England, in place of the patriotic fervor of the Italians, religious zeal, as we shall see later on, was kindled by the new humanistic studies.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 80. JOHANN REUCHLIN (1455-1522) “Father of modern Hebrew Studies”]

 

Among the universities Vienna, Heidelberg, Erfurt, T�bingen, and Leipzig (see Figure 61) were foremost in the introduction of the new learning.

Erfurt became the center of a group of humanistic scholars during the closing years of the fifteenth century, and the first Greek book printed in Germany appeared there, in 1501. At both T�bingen and Heidelberg Reuchlin (p. 254) taught for a time, and both institutions early became centers for the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. At Leipzig the reigning duke brought various humanistic scholars to the university to lecture, after 1507, and in 1519 entirely reformed the university by subordinating the mediaeval disciplines to the new studies. Four new universities—

Wittenberg (1502), Marburg (1527), K�nigsberg (1544), and Jena (1558)—

were established on the new humanistic basis, and from their beginning were centers for the new learning. At Wittenberg, Martin Luther had been made Professor of Theology, in 1508, when but twenty-five years of age, and to Wittenberg the Electoral Prince, in 1518, brought the young Melanchthon, then but twenty-one, as Professor of Greek. The universities of Germany were more profoundly affected by the introduction of the new learning than were those of any other country. The monastic orders and the Scholastics, who had for long controlled the German institutions, were overthrown by the aid of the ruling princes, and by the close of the first quarter of the sixteenth century the new humanism was everywhere triumphant in German lands.

 

GERMAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The enthusiasm of the humanists for the new learning led them to urge the establishment of humanistic secondary schools in the German cities. The schools of “The Brethren of the Common Life” (Hieronymians), a teaching order founded by Gerhard Grote at Deventer, Holland, in 1384, and which had established forty-five houses by the time the new learning came into the Netherlands from Italy, at once adopted the new studies, soon trebled the number of its houses, and for decades supplied teachers of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to all the surrounding countries. [4] Wessel, Agricola, Hegius, Reuchlin, and Sturm were among their greatest teachers, and Erasmus their greatest pupil. Here and there in German cities Latin schools, teaching the subjects of the Trivium, but principally the elements of Latin and grammar, had been established in the course of the later Middle Ages, and to these scholars trained in the new learning gradually made their way, secured employment, and thus quietly introduced a purified Latin and the intellectual part of the new humanistic course of study. Up to 1520 this method was followed entirely in German lands.

 

As in Italy, the commercial cities were among the first to provide schools of the new type. In 1526 the commercial city of Nuremberg, in southern Germany, opened one of the first of the new city humanistic secondary schools, Melanchthon being present and giving the dedicatory address. A number of similar schools were founded about this time in various German cities—Ilfeld, Frankfort, Strassburg, Hamburg, Bremen, Dantzig—among the number. Many of these failed, as did the one at Nuremberg, to meet the needs of the people in essentially commercial cities. Whatever might have been true in more cultured Italy, in German cities a rigidly classical training for youth and early manhood was found but poorly suited to the needs of the sons of wealthy burghers destined to a commercial career. The rising commerce of the world apparently was to rest on native languages, and not on elegant Latin verse and prose. The commercial classes soon fell back on burgher schools, elementary vernacular schools, writing and reckoning schools, business experience, and travel for the education of their sons, leaving the Latin schools of the humanists to those destined for the service of the Church, the law, teaching, or the higher state service.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 81. JOHANN STURM (1507-89) (After a contemporary engraving by Stofflin)]

 

THE WORK OF JOHANN STURM. The most successful classical school in all Germany, and the one which formed the pattern for future classical creations, was the gymnasium [5] at Strassburg, under the direction (1536-82) of the famous Johann Sturm, or Sturmius, as he came to call himself. This was one of the early classical schools founded by the commercial cities, but it had not been successful. In 1536 the authorities invited Sturm, a graduate of the University of Louvain, and at that time a teacher of classics and dialectic at Paris, where he had come in contact with the humanism brought from Italy, to become head of the school and reorganize it. This he did, and during the forty-five years he was head of the school it became the most famous classical school in continental Europe. His Plan of Organization, published in 1538; his Letters to the Masters on the course of study, in 1565; and the record of an examination of each class in the school, conducted in 1578, all of which have been preserved, give us a good idea as to the nature of the organization and instruction (R. 137).

 

Sturm was a strong and masterful man, with a genius for organization.

Probably adopting the plan of the French colleges (R. 136), he organized his school into ten classes, [6] one for each year the pupil was to spend in the school, and placed a teacher in charge of each. The aim and end of education, as he stated it, was “piety, knowledge, and the art of speaking,” and “every effort of teachers and pupils” should bend toward acquiring “knowledge, and purity and elegance of diction.” Of the ten years the pupil was to spend in the gymnasium, seven were to be spent in acquiring a thorough mastery of pure idiomatic Latin, and the three remaining years to the acquisition of an elegant style. Cicero was the great model, but Vergil, Plautus, Terence, Martial, Sallust, Horace, and other authors were read and studied. Except that the Catechism was first studied in the native German, Latin was made the language of the classroom. Great emphasis was placed on letter-writing, declamation, and the acting of plays. Rhetoric, too, was made a very important subject of study. Greek was begun in the fifth year of school and continued throughout, all instruction in Greek being given through the medium of the Latin. [7] The instruction in both Latin and Greek was much like that of the court schools of Italy, except that in Greek the New Testament was read in addition. The plays and games and physical training of the Italian schools, however, were omitted; much less emphasis was placed on manners and gentlemanly conduct; and in educational purpose a narrow drill was substituted for the broad cultural spirit of the French and Italian schools.

 

Sturm was the greatest and most successful schoolman of his day. In clearly defined aim, thorough organization, carefully graded instruction, good teaching, and sound scholarship, his school surpassed all others.

Sturm’s aim was to train pious, learned, and eloquent men for service in Church and State, using religion and the new learning as means, and in this he was very successful. In a short time after taking charge his gymnasium had six hundred pupils, and in 1578 there were “thousands of pupils, representing eight nations,” in attendance. Sturm became widely known throughout northern Europe, and scholars and princes passing through Strassburg stopped to visit his school and secure his advice. He corresponded with scholars in many lands, and the influence of his institution was enormous. He was the author of many school textbooks, and of half a dozen works on the theory and practice of education. He fixed both the type and the name—gymnasium—of the German classical secondary school, which to-day is not very materially changed from the form and character which Sturm gave it. Sturm’s work deeply influenced many later foundations in Germany, and also helped to mould the educational system devised later on by the Jesuits.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 82. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1467-1536) A contemporary portrait by the German artist, Hans Holbein the Younger, in the Louvre, Paris]

 

HUMANISM IN ENGLAND. Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet had introduced the new learning at Oxford, as we have already seen (p. 253), in the closing years of the fifteenth century (R. 133), but had made but little impression.

They were ably seconded by Erasmus, who taught Greek at Cambridge (1510-14), and who labored hard to substitute true classical culture for the poor Latin and the empty scholasticism of his time. He wrote textbooks [8]

to help introduce the new learning, urged the importance of history, geography, and science as serving to elucidate the