Besides Weimar, Würtemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Hesse-Cassel, and other provinces were active in school work. They organized schools, appointed teachers, and formulated school regulations. In 1642, Duke Ernst of Gotha adopted a new school regulation which was a century in advance of the time, and this action was taken when the Thirty Years' War was at its height and in a territory sadly devastated by contending armies.
This law required every child to enter school at the beginning of his sixth year, and to remain in school until he could read his mother tongue, had mastered Luther's catechism, and was well grounded in arithmetic, writing, and church songs. A course of study was marked out, the schools were graded, and methods of instruction were outlined. The greatest defect in the system was the lack of competent teachers. Discharged soldiers, worthless students, and degraded craftsmen who could read and write, and who possessed a little knowledge of music, continued for many years to be employed as schoolmasters. But little progress could be made under these adverse circumstances; and the only reason for encouragement was the fact that the duty of parents to keep their children at school was everywhere recognized.
The Innovators.—We must here mention also the Innovators or Reformers, whose period of educational activity falls chiefly within the seventeenth century. Among these appear the names of Francis Bacon, Ratke, Milton, Comenius, Rollin, Fénelon, and Locke. These men started movements which revolutionized education and laid the foundation of modern methods. The demands of the Reformers are summed up by Quick as follows: "First, that the study of things should precede, or be united with, the study of words; second, that knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by appeal to the senses; third, that all linguistic study should begin with that of the mother tongue; fourth, that Latin and Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned education; fifth, that physical education should be attended to in all classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to gentlemanly accomplishments; sixth, that a new method of teaching should be adopted, framed 'According to nature.'"[85] In another chapter we shall study the life and work of some of these men.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] "History of Germany," p. 409.
[85] Quick, "Educational Reformers," p. 50.