QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why is progress that is substantial nearly always a product of slow rather than rapid evolution?
2. Show why the evolution of many Protestant sects was a natural consequence of the position assumed by Luther. What is the ultimate outcome of the process?
3. Why was it not important that more than a few be educated under the older theory of salvation?
4. Show how modern democratic government was a natural consequence of the Protestant position.
5. Why was universal education involved as a later but ultimate consequence of the position taken by the Protestants?
6. Explain why the local Church authorities, before 1520, tried so hard to prevent the establishment of vernacular schools.
7. Explain why the religious discussions of the Reformation should have so strongly stimulated a desire to read.
8. Explain the fixing in character of the German, French, and English languages by a single book. What had fixed the Italian?
9. Was Luther probably right when he wrote, in 1524, that the schools "were deteriorating throughout Germany"? Why?
10. Give reasons why Luther's appeals for schools were not more fruitful.
11. What was the significance of the position of Luther for the future education of girls?
12. Was Luther's idea that a clergyman should have had some experience as a teacher a good one, or not? Why?
13. How do you explain Luther's ideas as to coupling up elementary and trade education in his primary schools?
14. Point out the similarity of Luther's scheme for a school system with the German school system as finally evolved (Figure 96).
15. Show how Melanchthon's Saxony Plan differed from Luther's ideas. For the times was it a more practical plan? Why?
16. Explain why the Lutheran idea of personal responsibility for salvation made so little headway in England, and show that the natural educational consequences of this resulted.
17. Show what different conditions were likely to follow, in later centuries, from the different stands taken as to the relation of the State and Church to education by the German people by the middle of the sixteenth century, and by the English at the time of Elizabeth.
18. Compare the origin of the vernacular elementary-school teacher in Germany and England.
19. Leach estimates that, in 1546, there were approximately three hundred grammar schools in England for a total population of approximately two and one half millions. About what opportunities for grammar-school education did this afford?