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

>True to the Calvinistic teaching of putting principles into practice, they organized an extensive system of schools, extending from elementary education for all, through secondary schools or colleges, up to eight Huguenot universities. As a people they were thrifty and capable of making great sacrifices to carry out their educational ideals. The education they provided was not only religious but civil; not only intellectual but moral, social, and economic. Education was for all, rich and poor alike.

Their synods made liberal appropriations for the universities, while municipalities provided for colleges and elementary education. They emphasized, in the lower schools, the study of the vernacular and arithmetic, and in the colleges Greek and the New Testament. The long list of famous teachers found in their universities reveals the character of their instruction. Foster has well summarized the distinguishing characteristics of Huguenot education in France, before they were driven from the land, as follows: [4]

 

The significant characteristics of Huguenot education were: an emphasis on the education of the laity; training for “the republic”

and “society” as well as for the Church; insistence upon virtue as well as knowledge; the widespread demand for education, and a view of it as essential to liberty of conscience; a comprehensive working system of elementary, collegiate, and university training for all, poor as well as rich; an astonishing familiarity with Scripture, even among the lowest classes; utilization of representative church organization for founding, supporting, and unifying education; readiness to sacrifice for education, a spirit of carrying a thing through at any cost; business-like supervision of money, and systematic supervision of both professors and students; a notable emphasis on vernacular, arithmetic, Greek, use of full texts, and libraries; and finally a progressive spirit of inquiry and investigation.

 

In the Palatinate (see map, Figure 88) some progress in founding churches and schools was made, especially about Strassburg, and the universities of Heidelberg and Marburg became the centers of Huguenot teaching. In the Dutch Netherlands, and in that part of the Belgian Netherlands inhabited by the Walloons, Calvinist ideas as to education dominated. The universities of Leyden (f. 1575), Groningen (f. 1614), Amsterdam (f.

1630), and Utrecht (f. 1636) were Calvinistic, and closely in touch with the Calvinists and Huguenots of German lands and France. Popular education was looked after among these people as it was in Calvinistic France and Geneva. The Church Synod of The Hague (1586) ordered the establishment of schools in the cities, and in 1618 the Great Synod held at Dort (R. 176) ordered that:

 

Schools in which the young shall be properly instructed in piety and fundamentals of Christian doctrine shall be instituted not only in cities, but also in towns and country places where heretofore none have existed.

The Christian magistracy shall be requested that honorable stipends be provided for teachers, and that well-qualified persons may be employed and enabled to devote themselves to that function; and especially that the children of the poor may be gratuitously instructed by them and not be excluded from the benefits of schools.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 99. A DUTCH VILLAGE SCHOOL

(After a painting by Adrian Ostade, dated 1662, now in the Louvre, at Paris)]

 

Further provisions were made as to the certificating of schoolmasters, and the pastors were made superintendents of the schools, to visit, examine, encourage, advise, and report (R. 176). Provision for the free education of the poor became common, and elementary education was made accessible to all. The careful provision for education made by the province of Utrecht (1590, 1612) (R. 178) was typical of Dutch activity. The province of Drenthe ordered (1630) a school tax paid for all children over seven, whether attending school or not. The province of Overyssel levied (1666) a school tax for all children from eight to twelve years of age. The province of Groningen constituted the pastors the attendance officers to see that the children got to school. Amsterdam and many other Dutch cities demanded an examination of all teachers before being licensed to teach. By the middle of the seventeenth century a good system of schools seems to have been provided generally [5] by the Dutch and the Belgian Walloons (R.

178). That the teaching of religion was the main function of the Dutch elementary schools, as of all other vernacular schools of the time, is seen from the official lists of the textbooks used (R. 178).

 

John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation (1560), who had spent some time at Geneva and who was deeply impressed by the Calvinistic religious-state found there, introduced the Calvinistic religious and educational ideas into Scotland. His Book of Discipline for the Scottish Church (1560), framed closely on the Genevan model, contained a chapter devoted to education in which he proposed: That everie severall churche have a school-maister appointed, such a one as is able at least to teach Grammar and the Latin tung, yf the Town be of any reputation. Yf it be upaland … then must either the Reider or the Minister take cayre over the children … to instruct them in their first rudementie and especially in the catechisme.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 100. JOHN KNOX (1505?-72)]

 

The educational plan proposed by Knox would have called for a large expenditure of money, and this the thrifty Scotch were not ready for. Knox and his followers then proposed to endow the new schools from the old church and monastic foundations, but the Scottish nobles hoped to share in these, as had the English nobility under Henry VIII, and Knox’s plan was not approved. This delayed the establishment of a real national system of education for Scotland until the nineteenth century. The new Church, however, took over the superintendence of education in Scotland, and when parish schools were finally established by decree of the Privy Council, in 1616, and by the legislation of 1633 and 1646 (R. 179), the Church was given an important share in their organization and management. These schools, while not always sufficient in number to meet the educational needs, were well taught, and have deeply influenced the national character.

 

4. The Counter-Reformation of the Catholics

 

THE JESUIT ORDER. The Protestant Revolt made but little headway in Italy, Spain, Portugal, much of France, or southern Belgium (see map, p. 296).

Italy was scarcely disturbed at all, while in France, where of all these countries the reform ideas had made greatest progress, nine tenths of the people remained loyal to Rome. In a general way it may be stated that those parts of western Europe which had once formed an integral part of the old Roman Empire remained loyal to the Roman Church, while those which had been the homes of the Germanic tribes revolted. Now it naturally happened that the countries which remained loyal to the old Church experienced none of the feelings of the necessity for education as a means to personal salvation which the Lutherans and Calvinists felt. There, too, the church system of education which had developed during the long Middle Ages remained undisturbed and largely unchanged. The Church as an institution, though, learned from the Protestants the value of education as a means to larger ends, and soon set about using it. [6]

 

After the Church Council of Trent (1545-63), where definite church reform measures were carried through (p. 303), the Catholics inaugurated what has since been called a counter-reformation, in an effort to hold lands which were still loyal and to win back lands which had been lost. Besides reforming the practices and outward lives of the churchmen, and reforming some church practices and methods, the Church inaugurated a campaign of educational propaganda. In this last the chief reliance was upon a new and a very useful organization officially known as the “Society of Jesus,” but more commonly called the “Jesuit Order.” This had been founded, in 1534, by a Spanish knight, pilgrim, man of large ideas, and scholar by the name of Ignatius Loyola, and had been sanctioned as an Order of the Church by Pope Paul III, in 1540. It was organized along strictly military lines, all members being responsible to its General, and he in turn alone to the Pope. The quiet life of the cloister was abandoned for a life of open warfare under a military discipline. The Jesuit was to live in the world, and all peculiarities of dress or rule which might prove an obstacle to worldly success were suppressed. The purposes of the Order were to combat heresy, to advance the interests of the Church, and to strengthen the authority of the Papacy. Its motto was Omnia ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

(that is, All for the greater glory of God), and the means to be employed by it to accomplish these ends were the pulpit, the confessional, the mission, and the school. Of these the school was given the place of first importance. Realizing clearly that the real cause of the Reformation had been the ignorance, neglect, and vicious lives of so many monks and priests and the extortion and neglect practiced by the Church, and that the chief difficulty was in the higher places of authority, it became the prime principle of the Order to live upright and industrious lives themselves, and to try to reach and train those likely to be the future leaders in Church and State. With the education of the masses of the people the Order was not concerned. [7] Our interest lies only with the educational work of this Order, a work in which it was remarkably successful and through which it exercised a very large influence.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 101. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (1491-1556)]

 

GREAT SUCCESS OF THE ORDER. The service of the Order to the Church in combating Protestant heresies was very marked. Beginning in a small way, the Order, by 1600, had established two hundred colleges (Latin secondary schools), universities, and training seminaries; by 1640, 372; by 1706

(150 years after the death of its founder), 769; and by 1756, 728. In 1773, when the Order was for a time abolished, [8] after it had been driven out of a number of European countries because of the unscrupulous methods it adopted and the continual application of its doctrine that the end justifies the means, the Order had 22,589 members, about half of whom were teachers. Its colleges (secondary schools) and universities were most numerous and its work most energetically carried on in northern France, Belgium, Holland, the German States, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Here was the great battle line, and here the Jesuits deeply entrenched themselves. In these portions of Europe alone there were, in 1750, 217

colleges, 55 seminaries, 24 houses for novitiates, and 160 missions. In France alone there were 92 colleges. They did much, single-handed, to roll back the tide of Protestantism which had advanced over half of western Europe, and to hold other countries true to the ancient faith.

 

The colleges were usually large and well-supported institutions, with dormitories, classrooms, dining-halls; and playgrounds. The usual number of scholars in each was about 300, though some had an attendance of 600 to 800, and a few as high as 2000. At their period of maximum influence the colleges and universities of the Order probably enrolled a total of 200,000 students. Their graduates were prominent in every scholarly and governmental activity of the time. As far as possible the pupils were a selected class to whom the Order offered free instruction. The children of the nobility and gentry, and the brightest and most promising youths of the different lands were drawn into their schools. The children of many Protestants, also, were attracted by the high quality of the instruction offered. There they were given the best secondary-school education of the time, and received, at an impressionable age, the peculiar Jesuit stamp.

[9] Bacon gave his opinion as to the success of their instruction in the following sentence: “As for