History of Education, Levi Seeley [short novels in english txt] 📗

armies. Bitter animosities existed between the adherents of the papal church and the reformers, which found expression in bloodshed, rapine, and destruction of property.

England was torn asunder by civil war, which resulted in the death of Charles I. and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell,—the struggle between Cavalier and Roundhead, between established church and Puritan, ending finally in the revolution of 1688. The country was in a religious ferment during the greater part of this century, caused by a growing jealousy for the maintenance of the principle of the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. Nor was the struggle less virulent or disastrous in continental Europe. The religious upheaval of the previous century culminated in the terrible conflict known as the Thirty Years' War; this lasted from 1618 till 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia secured religious liberty to all men. Northern Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, as well as minor countries, were involved in this great war.

Let Bayard Taylor paint the result of this fearful struggle. "Thirty years of war! The slaughters of Rome's worst emperors, the persecution of the Christians under Nero and Diocletian, the invasions of the Huns and Magyars, the long struggle of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, left no such desolation behind them. At the beginning of the century, the population of the German Empire was about 30,000,000; when the Peace of Westphalia was declared, it was scarcely more than 12,000,000! Electoral Saxony, alone, lost 900,000 lives in two years.... The city of Berlin contained but 300 citizens, the whole of the Palatinate of the Rhine but 200 farmers. In Hesse-Cassel, 17 cities, 47 castles, and 300 villages were entirely destroyed by fire; thousands of villages, in all parts of the country, had but four or five families left out of hundreds, and landed property sank to about one twentieth of its former value.... The horses, cattle, and sheep were exterminated in many districts, the supplies of grain were at an end, even for sowing, and large cultivated tracts had relapsed into a wilderness. Even orchards and vineyards had been wantonly destroyed wherever armies had passed. So terrible was the ravage that, in a great many localities, the same amount of population, cattle, acres of cultivated land, and general prosperity was not restored until the year 1848, two centuries afterward!

"This statement of the losses of Germany, however, was but a small part of the suffering endured.... During the last ten or twelve years of the war, both Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in deeds of barbarity; the soldiers were nothing but highway robbers, who maimed and tortured the country people to make them give up their last remaining property.... In the year 1637, when Ferdinand II. died, the want was so great that men devoured each other, and even hunted down human beings like deer or hares, in order to feed upon them.

"In character, in intelligence, and in morality, the German people were set back two hundred years. All branches of industry had declined, commerce had almost entirely ceased, literature and the arts were suppressed, and except the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, there was no contribution to human knowledge. Even the modern High German language, which Luther had made the classic tongue of the land, seemed to be on the point of perishing. Spaniards and Italians on the Catholic, Swedes and French on the Protestant side, flooded the country with foreign words and expressions, the use of which soon became an affectation with the nobility, who did their best to destroy their native tongue.

"Politically, the change was no less disastrous. The ambition of the house of Hapsburg, it is true, had brought its own punishment; the imperial dignity was secured to it, but henceforth the head of the 'Holy Roman Empire' was not much more than a shadow.... As for the mass of the people, their spirit was broken; for a time they gave up even the longing for the rights which they had lost, and taught their children abject obedience in order that they might simply live."[84]

The Educational Situation.—These political conditions had a marked influence upon education. Schools were abandoned, colleges gave up their charters, and people were content to allow their children to grow up in ignorance. Indeed, it was not to be expected that, in the midst of their poverty and sorrow, parents should care for education. And yet, some most important and wise school laws were enacted and put into force, which form the basis of the present German school system, as well as the school systems of many other countries. In 1619 the Duke of Weimar decreed that all children, girls as well as boys, should be kept in school for at least six years,—from six to twelve. This is the first efficient compulsory education law on record intended for all classes of children.

Besides Weimar, Würtemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Hesse-Cassel, and other provinces were active in school work. They organized schools, appointed teachers, and formulated school regulations. In 1642, Duke Ernst of Gotha adopted a new school regulation which was a century in advance of the time, and this action was taken when the Thirty Years' War was at its height and in a territory sadly devastated by contending armies.

This law required every child to enter school at the beginning of his sixth year, and to remain in school until he could read his mother tongue, had mastered Luther's catechism, and was well grounded in arithmetic, writing, and church songs. A course of study was marked out, the schools were graded, and methods of instruction were outlined. The greatest defect in the system was the lack of competent teachers. Discharged soldiers, worthless students, and degraded craftsmen who could read and write, and who possessed a little knowledge of music, continued for many years to be employed as schoolmasters. But little progress could be made under these adverse circumstances; and the only reason for encouragement was the fact that the duty of parents to keep their children at school was everywhere recognized.

The Innovators.—We must here mention also the Innovators or Reformers, whose period of educational activity falls chiefly within the seventeenth century. Among these appear the names of Francis Bacon, Ratke, Milton, Comenius, Rollin, Fénelon, and Locke. These men started movements which revolutionized education and laid the foundation of modern methods. The demands of the Reformers are summed up by Quick as follows: "First, that the study of things should precede, or be united with, the study of words; second, that knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by appeal to the senses; third, that all linguistic study should begin with that of the mother tongue; fourth, that Latin and Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned education; fifth, that physical education should be attended to in all classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to gentlemanly accomplishments; sixth, that a new method of teaching should be adopted, framed 'According to nature.'"[85] In another chapter we shall study the life and work of some of these men.

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