INFLUENCE ON OTHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. In a preceding chapter (p. 152) we mentioned the founding of many English grammar schools after 1200. At the time Saint Paul's School was refounded there were something like three hundred of these, of all classes, in England. They existed in connection with the old monasteries, cathedrals, collegiate churches, guilds, and charity foundations in connection with parish churches, while a few were due to private benevolence and had been founded independently of either Church or State. The Sevenoaks Grammar School, founded by the will of William Sevenoaks, in 1432 (R. 141), and for which he stated in his will that he desired as master "an honest man, sufficiently advanced and expert in the science of Grammar, B.A., by no means in holy orders," and the chantry grammar school founded by John Percyvall, in 1503 (R. 142), are examples of the parish type. The famous Winchester Public School, founded by Bishop William of Wykeham, in 1382, to emphasize grammar, religion, and manners, and to prepare seventy scholars for New College, at Oxford, [14] where they were to be trained as priests; and Eton College, founded by Henry VI, in 1440, to prepare students for King's College, at Cambridge, are examples of the larger private foundations. A few, such as the grammar school at Sandwich (1579), owed their origin (R. 143) to the initiative of the city authorities. Most of these grammar schools were small, but a few were large and wealthy establishments.
These old foundations, with their mediaeval curriculum, after a time began to feel the influence of Colet's school. Within a century, due to one influence or another, practically all had been remodeled after the new classical type set up by Colet. In the course of study given for Eton (R. 144), for 1560, we see the new learning fully established, and in the course of study for a small country grammar school, in 1635 (R. 145), we see how fully the new learning, with its emphasis on Latin as a living language, had by this time extended to even the smallest of the English grammar schools. The new foundations, after 1510, were almost entirely new-learning grammar schools, with large emphasis on grammar, good Latin and Greek, games and sports, and the religious spirit. One of the most conspicuous of these later foundations was Merchant Taylor's School, [15] founded in London in 1561, and of which Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), the author of two important books on educational theory, [16] was for long the headmaster. The first American Latin grammar school (Boston, 1635) was a direct descendant of these English influences and traditions.
[Illustration: PLATE 5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL Established by the Holy Cross Guild of Stratford-on-Avon, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Grammar School was built in 1426, of wood, and at a cost of £10, 5_s_., 3-1/2_d_. The school was held on the upper floor, the lower being used as a guild-hall. Here Shakespeare went to school, and saw companies of strolling players in the hall below. The lower picture shows the grammar-school room after its "restoration," in 1892.]
THE REACTION AGAINST MEDIAEVALISM. Having traced the introduction of the new learning by countries, it still remains to point out certain significant educational features of the movement which were common in all lands, and which profoundly modified subsequent educational practice. Both the purpose and the method of education were permanently changed.
Up to about the middle of the fourth Christian century the aim of both Greek and Roman education had been to prepare men to become good and useful citizens in the State. Then the Church gained control of education, and for a thousand years the chief object was to prepare for the world to come. Success and good citizenship in this world counted for little, religious devotion took the place of the old state patriotism, the salvation of souls took the place of the promotion of the social welfare, and the aim and end of life here was to attain everlasting bliss in the world to come. To be able to appease the dread Judge at the Day of Judgment, prayer, penance, and holy contemplation were the important things here below. It was preëminently the age of the self-abasing monk, and this mental attitude dominated all thinking and learning.
The spirit behind the Revival of Learning was a protest against this mediaeval attitude, and the protest was vigorous and successful. The Revival of Learning was a clear break with mediaeval traditions and with mediaeval authority. It restored to the world the ideals of earlier education—self-culture, and preparation for usefulness and success in the world here. In Italy, France, Germany, and England the movement, too, met with the most thorough approval from modern men—merchants, court officials, and scholars who were ready to break with the mediaeval type of thinking. The court and other types of secondary schools now established were popular with the higher classes in society, and this aristocratic stamp the humanistic schools and courses have ever since retained. These schools restored to the world the practical education of the days of Cicero, and preparation for intelligent service in the Church, State, and the larger business life became one of their important purposes. Supported as they were by the ruling classes, the new schools were close to the most progressive forces in the national life of the different countries. They represented an unmistakable reaction against the world of the mediaeval monk and the Scholastic, and their early success was in large part because of this.
MODIFICATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CURRICULUM. The mediaeval curriculum, as we have seen (chap. VII), was based on instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts. Grammar at first was the great subject, but later Dialectic became the master science. Knowledge was regarded as an organic whole, capable of being stated in a brief encyclopaedia, and each man could learn it all. With the rise of university instruction some new knowledge was added, chiefly from Moslem sources, and the old knowledge was minutely re-ground. With the revival of the ancient learning there came, within a little more than a century, an enormous increase in the world's sum of knowledge, and the invention of printing came just in time to multiply and scatter this new knowledge throughout western Europe. To all the old subjects a new wealth of detail was added which made teaching encyclopaedias impossible. New purposes in education now came to prevail, and the great mediaeval teaching curriculum was changed in content and in relative importance.
Of the subjects in the old Trivium, Dialectic or Logic, which Scholastics had raised to the place of first importance, was dethroned, and relegated to a minor position in university instruction. In its place Grammar, as Quintilian knew and used the term (R. 76) and as based on and including Literature, was raised once more to the place of first importance. Out of this, Literature—at first the classical and later the modern—later came as a separate study, as did also the study of History and Mythology. By the latter part of the sixteenth century technical Grammar had been separated from Literature, and made a more elementary subject, while Rhetoric had developed into a critical study of literary art. Of the subjects of the Quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy were each greatly expanded, as a result of the introduction of much new knowledge, and each was reduced to textbook form, while Algebra and Trigonometry were now organized as teaching subjects. Due to their newness and difficulty these subjects were taught chiefly in the universities. There they remained for a long time before being passed down to the secondary schools. Out of the very elemental instruction given in Geography and Astronomy were in time evolved all the biological and physical sciences, though this development belongs to a later chapter (XVII), and these new subjects did not reach the secondary schools until well into the nineteenth century. The last of the quadrivial subjects, Music, experienced a different history in different countries. In the Germanic countries it continued to receive its old emphasis, while in England and France much less was made of it. After the setting-in of Puritanism in England, when music was regarded with great disfavor, it in large part passed out of the English curriculum. As a result the Germanic and Scandinavian nations are to-day singing nations, while the English and American are not. In early America, in particular, was the religious reaction against music especially strong.
[Illustration: FIG. 85. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STUDIES The great study of each period is in CAPITALS; subjects in italics indicate that they also were quite important. Least important subjects in ordinary type.]
NEW TEACHING METHODS. Such important changes naturally called for a progressively evolving series of printed textbooks, and these now came fast from the presses. The day of one textbook, which could dominate all instruction for hundreds of years, was over forever. A few books, such as Lily's or Melanchthon's Latin grammars and the textbooks of Erasmus, were still used for a long time, but throughout the sixteenth century, before the schools became formalized and lost their earlier purpose, each textbook issued was soon superseded by a better one. The invention of printing, too, changed teaching from a reading-by-the-professor to a textbook method, and tremendously shortened the time necessary to give instruction in any subject. With the manufacture of paper the written theme, too, displaced the disputation, with great gains in accuracy of thinking and refinement in the use of words. It was still the Latin theme or verse or oration, to be sure, and the object of the new instruction was to teach Latin as a living language, but before long the time was to come when the same methods would be transferred to instruction in the native tongues and for national ends.