Some Educational Aspects of Vives’ Dialogues
It is remarkable that an elementary text-book for teaching boys to speak Latin should raise so many fundamental questions in the theory of education. But any presentation of the Dialogues of Vives would seem to be incomplete which left unconsidered such points as Vives’ idea of the school, of the school-games, of nature study, of the use of the vernacular in the school, and Vives’ view of the relation of religion and education.
Vives’ Idea of the School
We learn from another book of Vives, the De Tradendis Disciplinis (1531), that the “true academy,” as he calls his ideal school, is “the association together and fellow sympathy of men equally good and learned, who have come together themselves for the sake of learning, and to render the same blessing to others.” Vives suggests that to such a “school” not only should boys go, but also men. He suggests that “even old men, driven hither and thither in a great tempest of ignorance and vice, should betake themselves to the academy as it were to a haven. In short, let all be attracted by a certain majesty and authority.” Further, Vives informs us that in this academy it would certainly be best to place boys there from their infancy, “where they may from the first imbibe the best morals, and evil behaviour will be to them new and detestable.” We thus see that “the academy” combines our so-called elementary, secondary, and university education. The idea of the continuity of education is thus firmly conceived by Vives, and, in addition, the action and reaction of different ages of the individual scholars of the academy on one another. Nowadays, we realise that the association together[xl] of those with the same limitations, e.g., orphans, the blind, the deaf, may be a necessary evil, but that every progressive educational effort should be made to help all those who suffer from such limitations to become capable of taking their places amongst the normal pupils. But Vives goes much further; with him, it is a defect in education to isolate the young from the old, the old from the young. If all be bent on learning and scholarship, the differences of age disappear as clearly as the differences of rank and wealth.
It is necessary to bear in mind this conception of the academy in reading the school dialogues, for we have in them little children learning their alphabet[13] and the elements of reading[14] and writing,[15] and we have also the youths (at our undergraduate stage) going on their academic journey on horseback from Paris to Boulogne. This reminds us of Milton’s sallying forth of students “at the vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, and it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”
And we have the student of mature age, in his dressing-gown, at midnight, pursuing his classical meditations. Thus infancy, youth, manhood, all stages, come into the conception of education. Education is a continuous process lasting throughout life, and for Vives the educational institution of “schools” should embody and make facilities for the achievement of that idea. In passing, it should be remarked that John Milton, in his Tractate of Education (1644), and John Dury (1650), in his Reformed School, advocate what we may call the Vives-Academy view of school![16] It must occur [xli]to every reader of Vives’ De Tradendis Disciplinis as highly probable that Milton’s hurriedly dashed-off and eloquent tractate was written after a fairly recent perusal of Vives’ book.
Games
The treatises on education in Tudor times have scarcely been surpassed by any later works in their treatment of physical education and advocacy of games. Particularly is this so in England, for in that period were published Sir Thomas Elyot’s Gouvernour (1531), Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus (1545), and Richard Mulcaster’s Positions (1581). But outstanding in their importance as these works were, Vives in his School Dialogues makes an interesting supplementary contribution.
Vives shows the value of “play” as an underlying spirit of school work, for the school is a form of “ludus” or play.[17] The little child, Corneliola, learns the alphabet “playing,” as indeed children had done at any rate from the days of Quintilian. Indeed, one of the most charming pictures of children provided by Vives is in Dialogue VI., which describes the mother, the boys Tulliolus, Lentulus, Scipio, and the little girl Corneliola, on the return from school of the boys, as they engage in children’s play and discussion of it. The games named in that dialogue are the games of “nuts,” “odd and even,” dice-play, draughts, and playing cards. Vives passes over the question of the moral obliquity of dice-playing and card-playing, though much was said in the Tudor period with regard to them.[18]