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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES AND THE FOUNDING OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. Between 1536 and 1539 the most striking result of the Reformation in England took place,—the dissolution of the monasteries. Their doubtful reputation enabled Henry and Parliament to confiscate their property, and "the dead hand of monasticism was removed from a third of the lands of England." There were precedents for this in pre-Reformation times, the church authorities themselves having converted several monastic foundations into grammar schools. At one blow Parliament now suppressed the monasteries of all England, some eight thousand monks and nuns were driven out, many of the monasteries, nunneries, and abbey churches were destroyed, and the monastic lands were forfeited to the Crown. It was a ruthless proceeding, though in the long course of history beneficial to the nation. Much of the land was given to influential followers of the king in return for their support, and a large part of the proceeds from sales was spent on coast defenses and a navy, though more than was formerly thought to be the case was used in refounding grammar schools. A number of the monasteries were converted into collegiate churches, with schools attached. Some of the alms-houses and hospitals confiscated at the same time were similarly used, and the cathedral churches in nine English cities were taken from the monks (R. 171), who had driven out the regular clergy during the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and were refounded as cathedral church schools. The cathedral church school at Canterbury, which Henry refounded in 1541 as a humanistic grammar school, with a song school attached, and for the government of which he made detailed provisions (R. 172), is typical of a school which had fallen into bad repute (R. 171), and was later refounded as a result of the confiscation of the monastic property. The College of Christ Church at Oxford, and Trinity College at Cambridge, were also richly endowed from the monastic proceeds.

In 1546 another Act of Parliament vested the title of all chantry foundations, some two hundred in number, in the Crown that they might be "altered, changed, and amended to convert them to good and godly uses as in the erecting of grammar schools," but so pressing became the royal need for money that, after their sale, the intended endowments were never made. As the song schools had been established originally to train a few boys "to help a priest sing mass," and as the service was now to be read rather than sung, the need for choristers largely disappeared. Being regarded as nurseries of superstition, they were abandoned without regret.

[Illustration: PLATE 7. THE FREE SCHOOL AT HARROW One of the "Great Public" Grammar Schools of England. Founded in 1571, in the reign of Elizabeth; building finished in 1593. The names of famous "old boys" are seen lettered on the wall at the back. Pupils are seen seated in "forms," reciting to the masters. (From a picture published by Ackermann, in his illustrated History of the Colleges of Winchester, Eton, Westminster, etc. London, 1816.)]

RESULT OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. The result of the change in religious allegiance in England was a material decrease in the number of places offering grammar-school advantages, though with a material improvement in the quality of the instruction provided, and a consequent decrease in the number of boys given free education in the refounded grammar schools. As for elementary education, the abolition of the song, chantry, and hospital schools took away most of the elementary schools which had once existed. The clerk of the parish usually replaced them by teaching a certain number of boys "to read English intelligently instead of Latin unintelligently," many new parish elementary schools were created, especially during the reign of Elizabeth, and in time the dame school, the charity school, the writing school, and apprenticeship training arose (chapter XVIII) and became regular English institutions. These types of schooling constituted almost all the elementary-school advantages provided in England until well into the eighteenth century.

The post-Reformation educational energy of England was given to the founding of grammar schools, and during the century and a half before the outbreak of the struggle with James II (1688) to put an end in England for all time to the late-mediaeval theory of the divine right of kings, a total of 558 grammar schools were founded or refounded. [15]

The grammar schools thus founded were, one and all, grammar schools of the reformed humanistic type. What was to be taught in them was seldom mentioned in the foundation articles, as it was assumed that every one knew what a grammar school was, so well by this time had the humanistic type become established. They were one and all modeled after the instruction first provided in Saint Paul's School (p. 275) in London, and such modifications as had been sanctioned with time, and this continued to be the type of English secondary school instruction until well into the nineteenth century.

THE DOMINATING RELIGIOUS PURPOSE. The religious conflicts following the reformation movement everywhere intensified religious prejudices and stimulated religious bigotry. This was soon reflected in the schools of all lands. In England, after the restoration under Catholic Mary (1553-58) and the final reëstablishment of the English Church under Elizabeth (1558), all school instruction became narrowly religious and English Protestant in type. By the middle of the seventeenth century the grammar schools had become nurseries of the faith, as well as very formal and disciplinary in character. In England, perhaps more than in any other Protestant country, Christianity came to be identified with a strict conformity to the teachings and practices of the Established Church, and to teach that particular faith became one of the particular missions of all types of schools. Bishops were instructed to hunt out schoolmasters who were unsound in the faith (R. 164 a), and teachers were deprived of their positions for nonconformity (R. 164 b). More effectively to handle the problem a series of laws were enacted, the result of which was to institute such an inquisitorial policy that the position of schoolmaster became almost intolerable. In 1580 a law (R. 165) imposed a fine of £10 on any one employing a schoolmaster of unsound faith, with disability and imprisonment for the schoolmaster so offending; in 1603 another law required a license from the bishop on the part of all schoolmasters as a condition precedent to teaching; in 1662 the obnoxious Act of Uniformity (R. 166) required every schoolmaster in any type of school, and all private tutors, to subscribe to a declaration that they would conform to the liturgy of the Church, as established by law, with fine and imprisonment for breaking the law; in 1665 the so-called "Five-Mile Act" forbade Dissenters to teach in any school, under penalty of a fine of £40; and in that same year bishops were instructed to see that

the said schoolmasters, ushers, schoolmistresses, and instructors, or teachers of youth, publicly or privately, do themselves frequent the public prayers of the Church, and cause their scholars to do the same; and whether they appear well affected to the Government of his Majesty, and the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.

This attitude also extended upward to the universities as well, where nonconformists were prohibited by law (1558) from receiving degrees, a condition not remedied until 1871 (R. 305). The great purpose of instruction came to be to support the authority and the rule of the Established Church, and the almost complete purpose of elementary instruction came to be to train pupils to read the Catechism, the Prayer Book, and the Bible. This intense religious attitude in England was reflected in early colonial America, as we shall see in a following chapter.

THE POOR-LAW LEGISLATION, AND ITS EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE. After the thirteenth century, due in part to the rise of the wool industry in Flanders, England began to change from a farming to a sheep-raising country. Accompanying this decline in the importance of farming there had been a slow but gradual growth of trade and manufacturing in the cities, and to the cities the surplus of rural peasantry began to drift. The cost of living also increased rapidly after the fifteenth century. As a result there was a marked shifting of occupations, much unemployment, and a constantly increasing number of persons in need of poor-relief. In the time of Elizabeth (1558-1603) it has been estimated that one half the population of England did not have an income sufficient for sustenance, and great numbers of children were running about without proper food or care, and growing up in idleness and vice.