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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

THE UNIVERSITIES. The condition of the universities by the middle of the eighteenth century we traced in the preceding chapter. They had lost their earlier importance as institutions of learning, but in a few places the sciences were slowly gaining a foothold, and in German lands we noted the appearance of the first two modern universities—institutions destined deeply to influence subsequent university development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.

END OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD. We have now reached, in our study of the history of educational progress, the end of the transition period which marked the change in thinking from mediaeval to modern attitudes. The period was ushered in with the beginnings of the Revival of Learning in Italy in the fourteenth century, and it may fittingly close about the middle of the eighteenth.

We now stand on the threshold of a new era in world history. The same questioning spirit that animated the scholars of the Revival of Learning, now full-grown and become bold and self-confident, is about to be applied to affairs of politics and government, and we are soon to see absolutism and mediaeval attitudes in both Church and State questioned and overthrown. New political theories are to be advanced, and the divine right of the people is to be asserted and established in England, the American Colonies, and in France, and ultimately, early in the twentieth century, we are to witness the final overthrow of the divine-right-of- kings idea and a world-wide sweep of the democratic spirit. A new human and political theory as to education is to be evolved; the school is to be taken over from the Church, vastly expanded in scope, and made a constructive instrument of the State; and the wonderful nineteenth century is to witness a degree of human, scientific, political, and educational progress not seen before in all the days from the time of the Crusades to the opening of the nineteenth century. It is to this wonderful new era in world history that we now turn.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Contrast a religious elementary school, with the Catechism as its chief textbook, with a modern public elementary school.

2. Contrast the elementary schools of Mulcaster and Comenius.

3. To what extent did the religious teachings of the time support Locke's ideas as to the disciplinary conception of education?

4. Do we to-day place as much emphasis on habit formation as did Locke? On character? On good breeding?

5. State some of the reasons for the noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory as to education, in Protestant lands, by the middle of the eighteenth century.

6. How do you explain the slow evolution of the elementary teacher into a position of some importance? Is the evolution still in process? Illustrate.