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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

9. Explain Green's cause-and-effect theory, as given in selection 134.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages.
Blades, William. William Caxton.
Duff, E. G. Early Printed Books.
* Field, Lilian F. Introduction to the Study of the Renaissance.
* Howells, W. D. Venetian Days (Venetian commerce).
* Keane, John. The Evolution of Geography.
La Croix, Paul. The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the
Renaissance.
* Loomis, Louise. Mediaeval Hellenism.
Oliphant, Mrs. Makers of Venice.
* Robinson, J. H., and Rolfe, H. W. Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar
and Man of Letters.
Sandys, J. E. History of Classical Scholarship, vol. II.
* Sandys, J. E. Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning.
Scaife, W. B. Florentine Life during the Renaissance.
Sedgwick, H. D. Italy in the Thirteenth Century.
* Symonds, J. A. The Renaissance in Italy; vol. II, The Revival
of Learning.
Thorndike, Lynn. History of Mediaeval Europe.
Whitcomb, M. Source Book of the Italian Renaissance.
* Walsh, Jas. J. The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries.

CHAPTER XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. It is often stated that the roots of all our modern educational practices in secondary education lie buried deep in the great Italian Revival of Learning. If we limit the statement to the time preceding the middle of the nineteenth century we shall be more nearly correct, as tremendous changes in both the character and the purpose of secondary education have taken place since that time. The important and outstanding educational result of the revival of ancient learning by Italian scholars was that it laid a basis for a new type of education below that of the university, destined in time to be much more widely opened to promising youths than the old cathedral and monastic schools had been. This new education, based on the great intellectual inheritance recovered from the ancient world by a relatively small number of Italian scholars, dominated the secondary-school training of the middle and higher classes of society for the next four hundred years. It clearly began by 1450, it clearly controlled secondary education until at least after 1850. Out of the efforts of Italian scholars to resurrect, reconstruct, understand, and utilize in education the fruits of their legacy from the ancient Greek and Roman world, arose modern secondary education, as contrasted with mediaeval church education.

Mediaeval education, after all, was narrowly technical. It prepared for but one profession, and one type of service. There was little that was liberal, cultural, or humanitarian about it. It prepared for the world to come, not for the world men live in here. The new education developed in Italy aimed to prepare directly for life in the world here, and for useful and enjoyable life at that. Combining with the new humanistic (cultural) studies the best ideals and practices of the old chivalric education— physical training, manners and courtesy, reverence—the Italian pioneers devised a scheme of education, below that of the universities, which they claimed prepared youths not only for an intellectual appreciation of the great and wonderful past of which they were descendants, but also for intelligent service in the two great non-church occupations of Italy in the fifteenth century—public service for the City-State, and commerce and a business life. This new type of education spread to other lands, and a new type of secondary-school training, actuated by a new and a modern purpose, thus came out of the revival of learning in Italy.

THE MOVEMENT IN ITALY PATRIOTIC. The inspiration for the revival of learning in Italy did not originate with the universities. Even the new chairs when established in the universities were regarded as inferior, and, in true university fashion, the occupants were tolerated by the other professors rather than approved of by them. Some of the universities— Pavia and Bologna, in particular—had practically nothing to do with the new movement. [1] Even in the rich and learned city of Florence, the head and front of the revival movement, the church scholars and many university men took little or no part in the restoration of the old studies. The learned archbishop, Saint Antoninus, who presided over the cathedral at Florence during the brightest days of that city's history, pursued his mediaeval scholastic instruction undisturbed, and even wrote a Summa Theologica of his own.

[Illustration: FIG. 76. SAINT ANTONINUS AND HIS SCHOLARS
Saint Antoninus (1380-1459) was the learned and pious Archbishop of
Florence from 1446 until his death. The picture of him giving instruction
is from the Venice (1503) edition of his Summa Theologica.]

The revival movement, on the contrary, was directed in its beginnings by a small group of patriotic Italians possessed of a modern spirit, and was financed by intelligent and patriotic merchants, bankers, and princes. Surrounded on all sides by monuments and remains testifying to Roman greatness, and with Roman speech in constant use by the scholars of the Church, the revival of Latin literature meant more to Italian scholars than to those of any other country. It seemed to them still possible to revive Roman life and make Roman speech once more the language of the learned world. The revival of Latin literature, too, meant much more to them than the revival of Greek. The chief value of the latter was to open up a still greater past, and through this to illuminate Roman life and literature. After about 1500 the enthusiasm for Greek rapidly died out in Italy, and the further interpretation of Greek life and thought was left to the northern nations.