A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

The Development of Gymnasiums: Melanchthon’s Work.—It can thus be seen what a profound effect the humanists trained in the Hieronymian schools had upon the Teutonic universities and other educational institutions. But there sprang up another set of schools, known Developed out of old schools for benefit of municipalities. as Gymnasien, that was an even more typical and lasting institutional development of the Northern Renaissance. These ‘gymnasiums’ grew largely out of the old cathedral and upper burgher schools, and were established for the benefit of the municipality, rather than for State and Church. Their development was gradual, but they were given their first definite shaping by Melanchthon (1497-1560). After a thorough humanistic training from his great-uncle, Reuchlin, and from the universities at Heidelberg and Tübingen, that scholar had become associated with Luther at the University of Wittenberg, and was requested by the Elector of Saxony in 1528 to Latin schools for Electorate of Saxony. organize the schools in his state. The ‘Latin Schools,’ which he planned for every town and village of the electorate, were divided into three classes, and the work in Latin and religion was adapted to the grade. Not even Greek or Hebrew appeared in the course; much less the vernacular, mathematics, science, and history. Nevertheless, it was from these municipal Latin schools, when the course had been somewhat modified and expanded, that the ‘gymnasium’ may be said to have sprung.

Sturm at Strassburg.—A further step in fixing the type and the first use of the term ‘gymnasium’ are found in the case of the classical school organized by Johann Sturm (1507-1589) at Strassburg in 1538. Here during his forty-five years as rector, Sturm worked out a gymnasial course of ten classes, upon which the pupils entered at six or seven years of age. The aim of this training he Piety, knowledge, and eloquence as ideals. held to be ‘piety, knowledge, and eloquence,’ meaning by the last an ability to speak and write Latin readily. For ‘piety,’ the Lutheran catechism was studied in German for three years, and in Latin for three years Course of the ten classes. longer. The Sunday Sermons were read in the fourth and fifth years, and the Letters of Jerome also in the fifth year, while the Epistles of St. Paul were carefully studied from the sixth year through the rest of the course. On the ‘knowledge’ and ‘eloquence’ side, Latin grammar was begun immediately and the drill continued for four years, during which the pupil passed gradually from memorizing lists of words used in everyday life and reading dialogues that embodied them to the translation of Cicero and the easier Latin poets. In the fourth year exercises in style were begun, and this was accompanied by a grammatical and literary study of Cicero, Vergil, Plautus, Terence, Martial, Horace, Sallust, and other authors, together with letter writing, declamation, disputation, and the acting of plays. Greek was begun in the fifth year, and after three years of grammatical training, Demosthenes, the dramatists, Homer, and Thucydides were undertaken.

Formalism in the Gymnasiums.—This training, like that of the Italian humanists, soon became set, formal, Formalism, and mechanical. While other authors than Cicero were read, the object was to acquire an ability to read, write, and speak Ciceronian Latin, and words, phrases, and expressions were carefully committed. The main emphasis throughout was upon form, with little regard for content, and the Latin and Greek were largely regarded as an end in themselves. Yet the gymnasium of Sturm was an enormous success, and was soon crowded with students. His pupils became the headmasters of all the but wide influence. most prominent schools, and through his wide correspondence with sovereigns and educators, the course of study formulated by Sturm became a model not only for Germany, but, in a sense, for the rest of Europe. At any rate, most of the existing secondary schools in Germany, and many founded later, became gymnasiums. The majority of the Hieronymian schools soon adopted the gymnasial course. This was also the case with the Fürstenschulen, or ‘princes’ schools,’ a type of institution started in 1543 by Duke Moritz of Saxony to train well-prepared officials for Church and State at public expense, and afterward absorbed into the gymnasial system. And the gymnasiums have to-day changed but little from Sturm’s organization. Owing to the later influence of realism, the addition of mathematics, modern languages, and the natural sciences has somewhat mitigated the amount of classics prescribed, but otherwise the German gymnasiums adhere to their formal humanism as tenaciously as in the sixteenth century.

The Humanistic Movement in England: Greek at Oxford and Cambridge.—In its northward march the humanistic education also effected profound changes in England. By the middle of the fifteenth century many former students of Oxford began to study at various humanistic centers in Italy. But the influence of such Grocyn and Linacre. innovators was scarcely felt until Grocyn and Linacre, who had gone to Florence about 1488, undertook to introduce Greek into education upon their return home. Grocyn (1442-1519) became the first lecturer on Greek at Oxford, but he was greatly assisted in the humanistic training by Linacre (1460-1524), although his lectureship was nominally on medicine. Among their pupils were Erasmus, Colet, and More. Erasmus, More, and Colet. Humanistic education did not reach Cambridge, however, until the close of the fifteenth century, but, with the progress of the sixteenth, that university rapidly overtook her sister institution. The real development began when Erasmus, while a professor of theology at Cambridge (1510-1514), consented also to lecture upon Greek as a labor of love. Erasmus was succeeded by a number of lecturers, and in 1540 the new regius professorship was held for four years each by the Cheke and Ascham. great teachers, Cheke (1514-1557) and Ascham (1515-1568).

Humanism at the Court.—As Cheke became private tutor to Prince Edward and Ascham to Princess Elizabeth, an Hellenic atmosphere was soon promoted in royal circles. A powerful assistance to the development of humanism was also found at the court through the More and Wolsey. influence of More, who was especially close to Cardinal Wolsey, and so for a time to the king, Henry VIII. A number of treatises upon humanistic education were written by members of the court, like More and Vives; Ascham’s Scholemaster. while Ascham produced his Scholemaster, a well-known work on teaching Latin and Greek by ‘double translation.’ This famous method consisted in having the child translate a passage into English, and then, after an hour, render it back into the original and have the master compare it with the text.

Colet and His School at St Paul’s.—The humanistic changes in English education, however, were not limited to the universities and the court. The schools also felt the effect of the new movement, and the most important factor in bringing this about was the foundation of Religious training combined with the classics. St. Paul’s School in 1509 by Colet. This scholar devoted most of the fortune left him by his father to establishing a humanistic school in St. Paul’s churchyard, dedicated to ‘the child Jesus.’ The institution was thus an outgrowth of Northern humanism, and combined religious training with a study of the classics. In connection with certain Latin authors and Church Fathers, the pupils studied the catechism in English, the Latin Grammar of Lily, who was the first headmaster of the school, and the De Copia of Erasmus. St. Paul’s school trained a long list of brilliant scholars, literary men, clergy, and statesmen, and became the immediate model for a host of other institutions. There were in existence at the time St. Influence upon other grammar schools. Paul’s was founded some three hundred ‘grammar’ schools of various types. These had come down from the Middle Ages, and their chief purpose had been the training of young men for the priesthood. Their curriculum was usually of the mediæval monastic type, but they soon felt the influence of the new school. Those which survived the general dissolution of ecclesiastical foundations by Henry VIII and Edward VI were gradually remodeled on the classical basis of St. Paul’s. New schools were also established in accordance with the humanistic ideals.

Humanism in the English ‘Grammar’ Schools.—But the humanism of the ‘grammar’ schools in England, as in Italy and Germany, soon became narrow and formal. The purpose of humanistic education came to be not so much a real training in literature as a practical command of Latin as a means of communication in all lands and Soon became narrow and formal. ages. Accordingly, the training became one of dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books. Expressions and selections were culled from authors and treasured in notebooks, and the methods became largely memoriter and passive. The formalism into which the schools of England had thus fallen by the seventeenth century is depicted in Brinsley’s Ludus literarius: or the Grammar Schoole, a work intended to ridicule and reform these conditions. It indicates that the training in Latin was devoted to drill in inflecting, parsing, and construing a fixed set of texts. Lily’s Grammar was memorized by the pupils, and references to it were glibly repeated, with little understanding of their meaning. All conversation was based upon some phrase-book, like the Colloquies of Corderius, and a Latin theme had to be ground out each week.

English ‘Grammar’ and ‘Public’ Schools To-day.—Although reforms have since been made in many of these directions, the organization and the formal humanism of the English ‘grammar’ school have been preserved Largely unchanged. in principle even to this day. Mathematics, modern languages, and sciences have been added, and a ‘modern side’ has been established as an alternate for the old course, but the classics are still the emphasized feature, and, to a large degree, the drill methods prevail. But, while it was originally intended that the grammar schools should, by means of the endowment, be open to rich and poor alike, because of the great increase in expenses, necessary and unnecessary, there are now not many opportunities for any one in the lower classes of society to attend a grammar school. Similarly, a distinction has come to be drawn between ‘grammar’ and The great ‘public’ schools. ‘public’ schools, although it is not a very clear one. In general, a ‘public school’ has a more aristocratic and wealthier patronage. Nine ‘great public schools’ were recognized by the Clarendon Commission in 1864,—Winchester ([Fig. 17]), Eton, St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Rugby, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, and Charterhouse; but several other old schools and a number of the stronger foundations of Victoria’s reign are generally admitted, and many others claim the dignity of the name that would not be considered eligible outside of the immediate locality.

The ‘Grammar’ Schools in the American Colonies.—It was after these ‘grammar’ schools of the mother country First American secondary schools modeled after English. that the first secondary schools in America were modeled and named. In many instances the fathers of the colonies, such as Edward Hopkins, William Penn, and Roger Williams, had been educated in the grammar schools of England, and naturally sought to model the institutions in their new home after them as nearly as the different conditions would permit. The Boston Latin (Grammar) School was founded as early as 1635 ([Fig. 23]), and other towns of Massachusetts,—Charlestown, Ipswich, Salem, Dorchester, Newbury, Cambridge, and Roxbury, also before long established grammar schools. Similarly, towns of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the other colonies, had in many cases founded grammar schools before the close of the century. Moreover, the legislatures of Massachusetts (1647) and Connecticut (1650) soon ordered that a ‘grammar’ school be established in every town having one hundred families. The American grammar schools, like their prototypes, were secondary and sustained no real relation to the elementary schools. They were mostly intended to fit pupils for college, although sometimes the college had not yet been established, and thus to furnish a preliminary step to preparation for the Christian ministry. Hence their course consisted chiefly in reading the classics and the New Testament, and used among its texts Lily’s Grammar and the Colloquies of Corderius. And while the hold of formal humanism upon secondary education was somewhat relaxed during the subsequent stages of the ‘academy’ and the ‘high school,’ the formal classical training was considered the only means of a liberal education until well into the nineteenth century.