The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

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 university foundations, and to the beginning of independent and secular study once more in the western world. The Revival of Learning, the recovery of the ancient manuscripts, the revival of the study of Greek in the West, the founding of libraries, the invention of paper and printing, and the revival of trade and commerce—all were new forces tending to give a new direction to scholarly study, and as a result a new race of scholars, more or less independent of the Church, now arose in western Europe. They were, however, a class, and a very small class at that, and though the result of their work was the creation of a new humanistic secondary school, this still ministered to the needs of but a few. This few was intended either for the service of the Church, for the governmental service of the towns which had by this time attained their independence, or for the governments of the rising principalities or states.

For the great mass of the people, whose purpose in life was to work and believe and obey, agriculture, warfare, the rising trades with their guilds (p. 209), and the services of the Church constituted almost all in the way of education which they ever received. To be useful to his overlord and master here and to be saved hereafter were the chief life- purposes of the common man. The former he must himself undertake in order to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to those who followed her teachings.

THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal versus collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. The aim was the same as before—personal salvation—but the method was now changed from that of the Church as intermediary to personal knowledge and faith and effort. To be saved, one must know something of the Word of God, and this necessitated instruction. To this end, in theory at least, schools had to be established to educate the young for membership in the new type of Church relationship. Reading the vernacular, a little counting and writing, in Teutonic countries a little music, and careful instruction in a religious Primer (R. 202), the Catechism, and the Bible, now came to constitute the subject matter of a new vernacular school for the children of Protestants, and to a certain extent in time for the children of Catholics as well. As we pointed out earlier (p. 353), between this new type of school for religious ends and the older Latin grammar school for scholarly purposes there was almost no relationship, and the two developed wholly independently of one another. In the Latin grammar schools one studied to become a scholar and a leader in the political or ecclesiastical world; in the vernacular religious school one learned to read that he might be able to read the Catechism and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was scarcely any other purpose to the maintenance of the elementary vernacular schools. This condition continued until well into the eighteenth century.

[Illustration: FIG. 129. A FRENCH SCHOOL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
(After an etching by Boisseau, 1730-1809)]

EARLY UNSUCCESSFUL EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. Back in the seventeenth century, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, a very earnest effort was made by Ratke and Comenius to introduce a larger conception of the educational process into the elementary vernacular school, to eliminate the gloomy religious material from the textbooks, to substitute a human- welfare purpose for the exclusively life-beyond view, and to transform the school into an institution for imparting both learning and religion. Comenius in particular hoped to make of the new elementary religious school a potent instrument for human progress by introducing new subject- matter, and by formulating laws and developing methods for its work which would be in harmony with the new scientific procedure so well stated by Francis Bacon. Comenius stands as the commanding figure in seventeenth- century pedagogical thought. He reasoned out and introduced us to the whole modern conception of the educational process and purpose, and gave to the school of the people a solid theoretical and practical basis. Living, though, at an unfortunate period in human history, he was able to awaken little interest either in rational teaching-method or in reforms looking to the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Instead he roused suspicion and distrust by the innovations and progressive reforms he proposed; his now-celebrated book on teaching method (Rs. 218, 219) was not at the time understood and was for long forgotten, while the fundamentally sound ideas and pedagogical reforms which he proposed and introduced were lost amid the hatreds of his time, and had to be worked out again and reëstablished in a later and a more tolerant age.

Another unsuccessful reformer of some importance, and one whose work antedated that of both Ratke and Comenius, was the London schoolmaster, Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), for twenty-five years headmaster of the famous Merchant Taylors' School, and later Master of Saint Paul's School. In 1581 he issued his Positions, a pedagogical work so far in advance of his time, and written in such a heavy and affected style, that it passed almost unnoticed in England, and did not become known at all in other lands. Yet the things he stood for became the fundamental ideas of nineteenth-century educational thought. These were:

1. That the end and aim of education is to develop the body and the faculties of the mind, and to help nature to perfection.

2. That all teaching processes should be adapted to the pupil taught.

3. That the first stage in learning is of large importance, and
requires high skill on the part of the teacher.

4. That the thing to be learned is of less importance than the pupil
learning.

5. That proper brain development demands that pressure and one-sided
education alike be avoided.

6. That the mother tongue should be taught first and well, and should
be the language of the school from six to twelve.

7. That music and drawing should be taught.

8. That reading and writing at least should be the common right of
all, and that girls should be given equal opportunity with boys.

9. That training colleges for teachers should be established and
maintained.

The modern nature of many of Mulcaster's proposals may be seen from the table of contents of his volume (R. 226). Mulcaster, like Comenius, thought far in advance of his age, and in consequence his book was soon and for long forgotten. Yet what Quick [1] says of him is very true:

It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of the vernacular instead of Latin, and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If this were made to occupy the school time up to twelve, Mulcaster held that more would be done between twelve and sixteen than between seven and seventeen in the ordinary (Latin grammar school) way. There would be a further gain in that the children would not be set against learning.

John Locke, and the disciplinary theory of education. Another commanding figure in seventeenth-century pedagogical thought was the English scholar, philosopher, teacher, physician, and political writer, John Locke (1632- 1704). In the preceding chapter we pointed out the place of Locke as a writer on the education of the sons of the English gentry, and illustrated by an extract from his Thoughts (R. 216) the importance he placed on such a practical type of education as would prepare a gentleman's son for the social and political demands of a world fast becoming modern. Locke's place in the history of education, though, is of much more importance than was there (p. 402) indicated. Locke was essentially the founder of modern psychology, based on the application of the methods of modern scientific investigation to a study of the mind, [2] and he is also of importance in the history of educational thought as having set forth, at some length and with much detail, the disciplinary conception of the educational process.

Locke had served as a tutor in an English nobleman's family, had worked out his educational theories in practice and thought them through as mind processes, and had become thoroughly convinced that it was the process of learning that was important, rather than the thing learned. Education to him was a process of disciplining the body, fixing good habits, training the youth in moral situations, and training the mind through work with studies selected because of their disciplinary value. This conception of education he sets forth well in the following paragraph, taken from his Thoughts:

The great Work of the Governor is to fashion the Carriage and form the Mind; to settle in his Pupils good Habits and the Principles of Virtue and Wisdom; to give him by little and little a View of Mankind, and work him into a Love and Imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the Prosecution of it, to give him Vigor, Activity, and Industry. The Studies which he sets him upon, are but as it were the Exercise of his Faculties, and Employment of his Time, to keep him from Sauntering and Idleness, to teach him Application, and accustom him to take Pains, and to give him some little Taste of what his own Industry must perfect (§94).

In his Thoughts Locke first sets forth at length the necessity for disciplining the body by means of diet, exercise, and the hardening process. "A sound mind in a sound body" he conceives to be "a short but full description of a happy state in this world," and a fundamental basis for morality and learning. The formation of good habits and manners through proper training, and the proper adjustment of punishments and rewards next occupies his attention, and he then explains his theory as to making all punishments the natural consequences of acts. Similarly the mind, as the body, must be disciplined to virtue by training the child to deny, subordinate desires, and apply reason to acts. The formation of good habits and the disciplining of the desires Locke regards as the foundations of virtue. On this point he says:

As the Strength of the Body lies chiefly in being able to endure
Hardship, so also does that of the Mind. And the great Principle and
Foundation of all Virtue and Worth is plac'd in this:—That a Man is
able to deny himself his own Desires, cross his own
Inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as best, tho' the
Appetite lean the other Way (§ 33).

Similarly, in intellectual education, good thinking and the employment of reason is the aim, and these, too, must be attained through the proper discipline of the mind. Good intellectual education does not consist merely in studying and learning, he contends, as was the common practice in the grammar schools of his time, but must be achieved by a proper drilling of the powers of the mind through the use of selected studies. The purpose of education, he holds, is above all else to make man a reasoning creature. Nothing, in his judgment, trains to reason closely so well as the study of mathematics, though Locke would have his boy "look into all sorts of knowledge," and train his understanding with a wide variety of exercises. In the education given in the grammar schools of his time he found much that seemed to him wasteful of time and thoroughly bad in principle, and he used much space to point out defects and describe better methods of teaching and management, giving in some detail reasons therefor. His ideas as to needed reforms in the teaching of Latin (R. 227) are illustrative.

LOCKE ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. For the beginnings of education, and for elementary education in general, Locke sticks close to the prevailing religious conception of his time. As for the education of the common people, he writes:

The knowledge of the Bible and the business of his own calling is
enough for the ordinary man; a Gentleman ought to go further.

Continuing regarding the beginnings of education and the studies and textbooks of his day, he says:

The Lord's Prayer, the Creeds, and the Ten Commandments, 't is necessary he should learn perfectly by heart…. What other Books there are in English of the Kind of those above-mentioned (besides the Primer) fit to engage the Liking of Children, and tempt them to read, I do not know;… and nothing that I know has been considered of this Kind out of the ordinary Road of the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible (§ 157).

Locke does, however, give some very sensible suggestions as to the reading of the Bible (R. 228), the imparting of religious ideas to children, and the desirability of transforming instruction so as to make it pleasant and agreeable, with plenty of natural playful activity. [3] On this point he writes:

He that has found a Way how to keep up a Child's Spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many Things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to Things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education (§ 46).

INFLUENCE OF LOCKE'S THOUGHTS. The volume by Locke contains much that is sensible in the matter of educating a boy. The emphasis on habit formation, reasoning, physical activities and play, the individuality of children, and a reformed method in teaching are its strong points. The thoroughly modern character of the book, in most respects, is one of its marked characteristics. The volume seems to have been much read by middle and upper-class Englishmen, and copies of it have been found in so many old colonial collections that it was probably well known among early eighteenth-century American colonists. That the book had an important influence on the attitude of the higher social classes of England toward the education of their sons and, consciously or unconsciously, in time helped to redirect the teaching in that most characteristic of English educational institutions, the English Public (Latin Grammar) School, seems to be fairly clear. On elementary religious and charity-school education it had practically no influence.

Locke's great influence on educational thought did not come, though, for nearly three quarters of a century afterward, and it came then through the popularization of his best ideas by Rousseau. Karl Schmidt [4] well says of his work:

Locke is a thorough Englishman, and the principle underlying his education is the principle according to which the English people have developed. Hence his theory of education has in the history of pedagogy the same value that the English nation has in the history of the world. He stood in strong opposition to the scholastic and formalized education current in his time, a living protest against the prevailing pedantry; in the universal development of pedagogy he gives impulse to the movement which grounds education upon sound psychological principles, and lays stress upon breeding and the formation of character.

Restating and expanding the leading ideas of Locke in his Emile (chapter XXI), and putting them into far more attractive literary form, Rousseau scattered Locke's ideas as to educational reform over Europe. In particular Rousseau popularized Locke's ideas as to the replacement of authority by reason and investigation, his emphasis on physical activity and health, his contention that the education of children should be along lines that were natural and normal for children, and above all Locke's plea for education through the senses rather than the memory. In so popularizing Locke's ideas, and at a time when all the political tendencies of the period were in the direction of the rejection of authority and the emphasis of the individual, those educational reformers who were inspired by the writings of Rousseau created and applied, largely on the foundations laid down by John Locke, a new theory as to educational aims and procedure which dominated all early nineteenth-century instruction. This we shall trace further in a subsequent chapter (chapter XXI).

It was at this point that the educational problem stood, in so far as a theory as to educational aims and the educational process was concerned, when Rousseau took it up (1762). Before passing to a consideration of his work, though, and the work of those inspired by him and by the French revolutionary writers and statesmen, let us close this third part of our history by a brief survey of the development so far attained, the purpose, character, aims, and nature of instruction in the schools, and their means of support and control at about the middle of the century in which Rousseau wrote, and before the philosophical and political revolutions of the latter half of the eighteenth century had begun to influence educational aims and procedure and control.