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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

Since 1871, also, technical and scientific education has been emphasized; the primary and superior-primary schools have been made free (1881) and compulsory (1882); classes for adults have been begun generally; the state aid for schools has been very greatly increased; lycées and colleges for women have been created (1880); the lycées modernized in their instruction [15] and the reorganization and reëstablishment of a series of fifteen state universities of a modern type, begun in 1885, was completed in 1896. The reorganization and expansion of education in France since 1875 is a wonderful example of republican interest and energy, and is along entirely different lines from those followed, since the same date, in German lands.

After the lapse of nearly a century we now see the French Revolutionary ideas of gratuity, obligation, and secularization finally put into effect, and the state system of public instruction outlined by Condorcet (p. 514), in 1792, at last an accomplished fact.

II. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN ITALY

IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK OF NAPOLEON. So much has been written about the deluge of blood that took place in Paris in the days of the Commune and the time of the National Conventions, and of the military victories and autocratic rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, that it is difficult to appraise the importance of either, from the point of view of the progress of civilization and of the organization of modern political institutions, at its true worth. The faults of both are prominent and outstanding, but it nevertheless was the merit of the Revolution that it enabled France, and along with France a good portion of western Europe, to rid itself of the worst survivals of the Middle Ages, while to Napoleon much of western Europe is indebted for the foundation of its civil institutions, unified legal procedure, beginnings of state educational organization, and modern governmental forms. Writing on this subject, Matthew Arnold [16] well said:

With all his faults, his [Napoleon's] reason was so clear and strong that he saw, in its general outlines at least, the just and rational type of civil organization which modern society needs, and wherever his armies went he instituted it.

[Illustration: FIG. 178. EUROPE IN 1810 Showing the control of France when Napoleon was at the height of his power.]

That the French Revolution's merit and service was a real one is shown by all the world, as it improves, getting rid more and more of the Middle Ages. That Napoleon's merit and service was a real one is shown by the bad governments which succeeded him having always got rid, when they could, of his work, and by the progress of improvement, when these governments became intolerable, and are themselves got rid of, always bringing it back. Where governments were not wholly bad, and did not get rid of Napoleon's good work, this work turns out to have the future on its side, and to be more likely to assimilate the institutions round it to its pattern than to be itself assimilated by them.

In the Italian States, the Netherlands, some of the French cantons of Switzerland, the Rhine countries, and the Danish peninsula, in particular, the rule of Napoleon, imposed by his armies, carried out by rulers of his selection, and maintained for a long enough period that the legal organization, civil order, unified government, and taste of educational opportunities of a new type which his rule brought became attractive to the people, in time proved deeply influential in their political development. [17] All these nations still show traces of the French influence in their state educational organization. We shall take the Italian States as a type, and examine briefly the influence on the development of state educational organization there which resulted from contact with the forward-looking rule of "The Great Emperor."

DECLINE IN IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION IN ITALY. In a preceding chapter (p. 503), we mentioned that the rule of Napoleon in northern Italy awakened the national spirit from its long lethargy, and caused Italian liberals to look forward, for the first time since the days of the Revival of Learning, to the time when the Italian States might be united into one Italian nation, with Rome as its capital. This became the work of the mid- nineteenth century (see dates, Fig. 179), though not fully completed until the World War of 1914-18. Italy stands to-day a great united nation, with a large future ahead of it, but as such it is entirely a nineteenth- century creation. From the time of its intellectual decline following the Renaissance, to the middle of the nineteenth century, Italy remained "a geographical expression" and split up into a number of little independent States; up to the time of Napoleon it was a part of the German-ruled "Holy Roman Empire."

After the great patriotic effort of the period of the Revival of Learning (p. 264) in Italy, and the rather feeble and unsuccessful attempts at a reform of religion which followed, the intellectual development of Italy was checked and turned aside for centuries by the triumph of an unprogressive and anti-intellectual attitude on the part of the dominant Church. The persecution of Galileo (p. 388) was but a phase of the reaction in religion which had by that time set in. Education was turned over to the religious orders, such as the Jesuits and the Barnabites, and instruction was turned aside from liberal culture and the promotion of learning to the support of a religion and the stamping out of heresy. Though a number of educational foundations were made, and some important undertakings begun after the days when her universities were crowded and Florence and Venice vied with one another for the intellectual supremacy of the western world, the spirit nevertheless was gone, and both education and government settled down to a tenacious preservation of the existing order. Scholars ceased to frequent the schools of Italy; the universities changed from seats of learning to degree-conferring institutions; [18] the intellectual capitals came to be found north of the Alps; and the history of educational progress ceased to be traced in this ancient land. In the early part of the eighteenth century the schools there reached perhaps their lowest intellectual level.