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

With masterly skill they ruled the Catholic world for about two centuries; and, in the beginning of their activity, performed services of great value to mankind. For, although they aimed, in their system of education, to fit pupils merely for so-called practical avocations, and to avoid all subjects likely to stimulate them to independent thought, it was nevertheless the best system which had then appeared.

In dropping the old scholastic methods, and teaching new and fresher subjects, although with the intention of perverting them to their own ends, they sowed, in fact, the germs of their own decay. In spite of their wonderful organization, and their indefatigable industry as courtiers in royal palaces, as professors in the universities, as teachers in the schools, as preachers, as confessors, and as missionaries, they were utterly unable to crush the spirit of doubt and inquiry. During the first half century of their existence they were intellectually in advance of their age; but after that they gradually dropped behind it, and, instead of diffusing knowledge, saw that the only hope of retaining their dominion was to oppose it with all their might.

THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. As was stated on a preceding page, the countries which remained loyal to the Church experienced none of the Protestant feeling as to the necessity for universal education for individual salvation. In such lands the church system of education which had grown up during the Middle Ages remained undisturbed, and was expanded but slowly with the passage of time. The Church, never having made general provision for education, was not prepared for such work. Teachers were scarce, there was no theory of education except the religious theory, and few knew what to do or how to do it. Many churchmen, too, did not see the need for doing anything. Nevertheless the Church, spurred on by the new demands of a world fast becoming modern, and by the exhortations of the official representatives of the people, [13] now began to make extra efforts, in the large cathedral cities, to remedy the deficiency of more than a thousand years. In Paris, for example, which was typical of other French cities, the Church organized a regular system of elementary schools, with teachers licensed by the Precentor of the cathedral of Notre Dame and nominally under his supervision, in which instruction was offered to children of the artisan and laboring classes, of both sexes, “in reading, writing, reckoning, the rudiments of Latin Grammar, Catechism, and singing.” By 1675 these “Little Schools” in Paris came to contain “upwards of 5000 pupils, taught by some 330 masters and mistresses.” All such schools, of course, remained under the immediate control of the Church, and modern state systems of education in the Catholic States are late nineteenth-century productions. In Spain, Portugal, Poland, and the Balkan States, general state systems of education have not even as yet been evolved.

The general effect of the Reformation, though, was to stimulate the Church to greater activity in elementary, as well as in secondary and higher education. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we find a large number of decrees by church councils and exhortations by bishops urging the extension of the existing church system of education, so as to supply at least religious training to all the children of the faithful. As a result a number of teaching orders were organized, the aim of which was to assist the Church in providing elementary and religious education for the children of the laboring and artisan classes in the cities.

TEACHING ORDERS ESTABLISHED. The teaching orders for elementary education, founded before the eighteenth century, with the dates of their foundation, were:

* 1535-The Order of Ursulines. (U.S., 1729.) 1592—The Congregation of Christian Doctrine.

1598—The Sisters of Notre Dame. (U.S., 1847.) 1610—The Visitation Nuns. (U.S., 1799.) 1621—Patres piarum scholarum (Piarists). First school opened in 1597; authorized by the Pope, 1662.

1627—The Daughters of the Presentation.

* 1633—The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. (U.S., 1809.) 1637—The Port Royalists (Jansenists). (Suppressed in 1661.) 1643—The Sisters of Providence.

* 1650—The Sisters of Saint Joseph. Rule based on Jesuits. (U.S., 19th C.)

1652—The Sisters of Mary of Saint Charles Borromeo.

1684—The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin.

1684—The Brothers of the Christian Schools. (U.S., 1845.) Have communities in the United States, the date being that of the first one established. See Cyclopedia of Education, vol. v, p.

528.

All of these, except the Ursulines and the Piarists, were founded in France, many of them originating in Paris. The first has long been prominent in Italy, and is now found in all lands. The second was founded by Father C�sar de Bus, at Cavaillon, Avignon, in southern France, and its purpose was to teach the Catechism to the young. The catechetical schools of this Order were prominent in southern France up to the time of the French Revolution. The third was founded by the Blessed Peter Fourier (1565-1640), in 1598, and played an important part in the education of girls in France, particularly in Lorraine, where Calvinism had made much headway. This noted Order offered free instruction to tradesmen’s daughters, not only in religion but in “that which concerns this present life and its maintenance” as well. The girls were taught “reading, writing, arithmetic, sewing, and divers manual arts, honorable and peculiarly suitable for girls” of their station of life. At a time when handwork had not been thought of for boys, the beginnings of such work were here introduced for girls. In 1640 Fourier gave the sisterhood a constitution and a rule, which were revised and perfected in 1694. In this he laid down rules for the organization and management of schools, methods of teaching the different branches, and provided for a rudimentary form of class organization. The following extract from the Rule illustrates the approach to class organization which he devised: [Illustration: FIG. 103. AN URSULINE

Order founded, 1535]

The inspectress, or mistress of the class, shall endeavor, as far as it possibly can be carried out, that all the pupils of the same mistress have each the same book, in order to learn and read therein the same lesson; so that, whilst one is reading hers in an audible and intelligible voice before the mistress, all the others, following her and following this lesson, in their books at the same time, may learn it sooner, more readily, and more perfectly. [14] The Piarists were established in Italy, the first school being opened in Rome, in 1597, by a Spanish priest who had studied at Lerida, Valencia, and Alcal�. Being struck by the lack of educational opportunities for the poor, he opened a free school for their instruction. By 1606 he had 900 pupils in his schools, and by 1613 he had 1200. In 1621 Pope Gregory XV gave his work definite recognition by establishing it a teaching Order for elementary (reading, writing, counting, religion) education, modeled on that of the Jesuits. The Order did some work in Italy and Spain, but its chief services were in border Catholic lands. In 1631 it began work in Moravia, in 1640 in Bohemia, in 1642 in Poland, and after 1648 in Austria and Hungary. The members wore a habit much like that of the Jesuits, had a scheme of studies similar to their Ratio, and were organized by provinces and were under discipline as were the members of the older Order.

The Jansenists, founded by Saint Cyran, at Port Royal, conducted a very interesting and progressive educational experiment, and their schools have become known to history as the “Little Schools of Port Royal.” The congregation was a reaction against the work and methods of the Jesuits.

It included both elementary and secondary education, but never extended itself, and probably never had more than sixty pupils and teachers. After seventeen years of work it was suppressed through the opposition of the Jesuits, and its members fled to the Netherlands. There they wrote those books which have explained to succeeding generations what they attempted, [15] and which have revealed what a modern type of educational experiment they conducted. The progressive and modern nature of their teaching, in an age of suspicion and intolerance, condemned them to extinction. Yet despite the progressive nature of their instruction, the intense religious atmosphere which they threw about all their work (R. 181) reveals the dominant characteristic of most education for church ends at the time.

THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. The largest and most influential of the teaching orders established for elementary education was the “Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools,” founded by Father La Salle at Rouen, in 1684, and sanctioned by the King and Pope in 1724. As early as 1679 La Salle had begun a school at Rheims, and in 1684 he organized his disciples, prescribed a costume to be worn, and outlined the work of the brotherhood (_R. 182_). The object was to provide free elementary and religious instruction in the vernacular for the children of the working classes, and to do for elementary education what the Jesuits had done for secondary education La Salle’s Conduct of Schools, first published in 1720, was the ratio studiorum of his order. His work marks the real beginning of free primary instruction in the vernacular in France. In addition to elementary schools, a few of what we should call part-time continuation schools were organized for children engaged in commerce and industry. Realizing better than the Jesuits the need for well-trained rather than highly educated teachers for little children, and unable to supply members to meet the outside calls for schools, La Salle organized at Rheims, in 1685, what was probably the second normal school for training teachers in the world. [16] Another was organized later at Paris. In addition to a good education of the type of the time and thorough grounding in religion, the student teachers learned to teach in practice schools, under the direction of experienced teachers.

The pupils in La Salle’s schools were graded into classes, and the class method of instruction was introduced. [17] The curriculum was unusually rich for a time when teaching methods and textbooks were but poorly developed, the needs for literary education small, and when children could not as yet be spared from work longer than the age of nine or ten.

Children learned first to read, write, and spell French, and to do simple composition work in the vernacular. Those who mastered this easily were taught the Latin Psalter in addition. Much prominence was given to writing, the instruction being applied to the writing of bills, notes, receipts, and the like. Much free questioning was allowed in arithmetic and the Catechism, to insure perfect understanding of what was taught.

Religious training was made the most prominent feature of the school, as was natural. A half-hour daily was given to the Catechism, mass was said daily, the crucifix was always on the wall, and two or three pupils were always to be found kneeling, telling their beads. The discipline, in contradistinction to the customary practice of the time, was mild, though all punishments were carefully prescribed by rule. [18] The rule of silence in the school was rigidly enjoined, all speech was to be in a low tone of voice, and a code of signals replaced speech for many things.

[Illustration: FIG. 104. A SCHOOL OF LA SALLE AT PARIS, 1688

A visit of James II and the Archbishop of Paris to the School (From a bas-relief on the statue of La Salle, at Rouen)]

Though the Order met with much opposition from both church and civil authorities, it made slow but steady headway. At the time of the death of La Salle, in 1719, thirty-five years after its foundation, the Order had one general normal school, four normal schools for training teachers,