That his was a mixture of the medieval classical literature with a thin slice of Scripture sandwiched in for effect, is seen in the course of study as outlined by Painter. The school was divided into ten classes covering ten years, but only so much is given as is necessary to show the character of the studies: “Tenth class—The alphabet, reading, writing, Latin declensions and conjugations, German or Latin catechism.” “Ninth class—Latin declensions and conjugations continued. Memorizing of Latin words.” The eighth and the seventh classes are about the same. In the sixth, Greek is begun. The fifth class is as follows: “Study of words, ... versification, mythology, Cicero, and Virgil’s eclogues, Greek vocabulary.... On Saturday and Sunday, one of Paul’s epistles.”[135] The remaining four classes have much “learning by heart,” rhetoric, Paul’s epistles, orations of Demosthenes, the Iliad of Odyssey; memorizing and recitation of the Epistle to the Romans, dialectics, and rhetoric continued; Virgil, Horace, Homer, Thucidides, Sallust, weekly dramatic entertainments, and again a reading of Paul’s epistles.
Such a course of instruction was well fitted to bridge the gulf between the papacy and Protestantism. It was imbibing perhaps unconsciously the spirit of the new papal schools. “History, mathematics, natural science, and the mother tongue are ignored. A great gap is left between the gymnasium and life—a gap that could not be filled even by the university. In aiming to reproduce Greece and Rome in the midst of modern Christian civilization, Sturm’s scheme involves a vast anachronism.”[136]
Influence of Sturm’s school
The Strasburg gymnasium at one time numbered several thousand pupils representing Denmark, Poland, Portugal, France, and England. “Sturm’s influence extended to England, and thence to America.” An English writer says: “No one who is acquainted with the education given at our principal classical schools, Eaton, Winchester, and Westminster, forty years ago, can fail to see that their curriculum was framed in a great degree on Sturm’s model.”[137] And yet it is acknowledged that his “scheme involves a vast anachronism.”
Modern schools follow Sturm
To show that Sturm is the father of much of the instruction now given in our high schools and universities, Rosenkranz says: “John Sturm, of Strasburg, long before Comenius, had laid the foundation of what has become the traditional course of instruction and methods of study in the classical schools for preparation for college.”[138]
Reaction as seen in discipline
The decline in the matter of instruction was accompanied by a corresponding retrogression in the morals of university students. Painter tells us that “the state of morals at the universities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was very low. Idleness, drunkenness, disorder, and licentiousness prevailed in an unparalleled degree. The practice of hazing was universal, and new students were subjected to shocking indignities.” Duke Albrecht, of the university of Jena, wrote in 1624: “‘Customs before unheard of, inexcusable, unreasonable, and wholly barbarian, have come into existence.’” Then he speaks of the insulting names, the expensive suppers, and the carousing of the students, until “‘parents in distant places either determine not to send their children to this university, ... or to take them away again.’”[139]
Protestantism lost much because she ceased to educate her children. Had Protestantism remained true to her first principles of education, her overthrow would have been impossible. She paved the way for her own fall by departing gradually from the gospel, and by leaning more and more toward the classics and scholasticism.
Ignatius Loyola solves the problem