THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Both Montaigne and Locke were concerned alone with the education of the sons of gentlemen, individuals now coming rapidly into prominence to dispute place in the world of affairs with the higher nobility on the one hand and the clergy on the other. With the education of any other class Montaigne never concerned himself. As for Locke, he was later appointed a King's Commissioner, with certain oversight of the poor, and for the education of the children of such he drew up a careful report which, in true English fashion, provided for their training in workhouses and their apprenticeship to a trade (R. 217). He wrote nothing with regard to the education of the children of middle-class workers and tradesmen. Both authors also deal entirely with the work of a tutor, and not with the work of a teacher in a school. Neither deals specifically with elementary education, but rather with what, in Europe, would be called the secondary-school period in the education of a boy. Locke was extensively read by the gentry of England, as expressive of the best current practice of their class, and his ideas as to education were also of some influence in shaping the instruction of the non-conformist teachers in the academies there. His place in the history of education is also of some importance, as we shall point out later, for the disciplinary theory of education which he set forth. Still more, Locke later exerted a deep influence on the writings of Rousseau (chapter XXI), and hence helped materially to shape modern educational theory.



THE NEW SCHOOLS FOR THE SONS OF THE GENTRY. Both Montaigne and Locke, in their emphasis on the importance of a practical education for the social and political demands of a gentleman concerned with the affairs of the modern world, represent a still further reaction against the humanistic schools of the time than did the humanistic realists whom we have just considered. Still more, both are expressive of the attitude of the nobility and gentry of the time, who had almost deserted the schools as pedantic institutions of little value. France was then the great country of Europe, and French language, French political ideas, French manners, and French tutors found their way into all neighboring lands. A new social and political ideal was erected—that of the polished man of the world, who could speak French, had traveled, knew history and politics, law and geography, heraldry and genealogy, some mathematics and physics with their applications, could use the sword and ride, was adept in games and dancing, and was skilled in the practical affairs of life.



To give such training the French created numerous Academies in their cities. A writer of 1649 states that there were twelve such institutions at that time in Paris alone. Not infrequently some nobleman was at the head. Boys were first educated at home by tutors, and then sent to the Academy to be trained in riding, the military arts, fortification, mathematics, the modern languages, and the many graces of a gentleman. The Englishman, John Evelyn, who was in France in 1644, thus describes the French Academies:

At the Palais Cardinal in Paris I frequently went to see them ride and exercise the Greate Horse, especially at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis, and de Veau, whose scholes of that art are frequented by the Nobility; and here also young gentlemen are taught to fence, daunce, play on musiq, and something in fortifications and mathematics.

At Richelieu, near Tours, belongs an Academy where besides the exercise of the horse, armes, dauncing, etc., all the sciences are taught in the vulgar French by Professors stipendiated by the great Cardinal. The Academy of Juilly included some study of physical science, mathematics, geography, heraldry, French history, Italian, and Spanish, besides the riding and gentlemanly arts.

In England the tutor in the home became the type form for the education of the sons of a gentleman, the boys frequently being sent abroad to complete their education. In German lands, which in the seventeenth century were in close sympathy with French life and thought, Heidelberg being a center for the dissemination of French ideas, the French academy idea was copied, and what were called Ritterakademieen (knightly academies) were founded in the numerous court cities [2] for the education, along such lines, of the sons of the many grades of the German nobility. Between 1620 and 1780, before the rise of the German nationalistic movement which sought to replace French ideas by native German culture, was the great period of these German court schools, and during this period they bestowed on the sons of the German nobility the courtly and military education of the French academies. The education of the nobility was in consequence segregated from the intellectual life of other classes. "Gallants" and "pedants" were the respective outputs of the two types of schools.

III. SENSE REALISM

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:

(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a great saving of time; and

(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies, deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion to linguistic studies.

The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and the treatise of Quintilian.

The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von Raumer, has called Innovators. The chief pedagogical ideas of the Innovators were:

1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and the concrete to the abstract.

2. That things should come before rules.

3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than to construct.

4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself, rather than to accept or depend upon authority.

5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood and of real value.

6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in the studies taught.

7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for all instruction.

8. That the study of real things should precede the study of words about things.

9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that a method of teaching based on this then be worked out.

10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake of health, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.

11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an education in the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.

12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete an education, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.

13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide for teachers everywhere.

The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be considered here as types.

WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had suggested, in his Advancement of Learning (1603-05), a broader course of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of those who followed his thinking.

The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:

1. By using the German language in the earlier years: (a) Bring about the use of one common language among the German people, and thus lay the basis for unity in government and religion; (b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.

2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than had previously been required for one language only.

This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.

In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his Methodus Nova, which was the pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here. In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought them out. They were as follows:

1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.

2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.

3. Much repetition to insure retention.

4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages to be taught through it.

5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach, and the scholars to keep order and discipline.

6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.

7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.

8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.

9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.

We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.

During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Koethen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.

JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS. We now reach not only the greatest representative of sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the eighteenth century, but also one of the commanding figures in the history of education. Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. As a member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War. His home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and children murdered, and himself at times a fugitive and later an exile, Comenius gave his long life to the advancement of the interests of mankind through religion and learning. Driven from his home and country, he became a scholar of the world.

While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read and was deeply impressed by the "Address" of Ratke. Bacon's Novum Organum, which appeared when he was twenty-eight, made a still deeper impression upon him. He seems to have been familiar also with the writings of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands. He traveled extensively, and maintained a large correspondence with the scholars of his time. He was master of a Latin school in Moravia from the age of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the Moravian Church. Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all Protestant ministers, from his native land, and while an exile for a time took charge of a school at Lissa, in Poland. Here he worked out, in practice, the great work on method which he later published. In 1638 he was invited to reform the schools of Sweden; in 1641 he visited England, in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent the next eight years working at school reform in Sweden; from 1650 to 1654 he was in charge of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked out his famous textbooks for teaching language; he was consulted with reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylum in Amsterdam, where he died in 1671, at the age of seventy-nine. The verse beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his life.

COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD. While teaching at Lissa, in Poland, Comenius had formulated for himself the principles underlying school instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he called The Great Didactic. [5] The title page (R. 218) and the table of contents (R. 219) will give an idea as to its scope. In this work Comenius formulated and explained his two fundamental ideas, namely, that all instruction must be carefully graded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in imparting knowledge to children, the teacher must make constant appeal through sense-perception to the understanding of the child. We have here the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands as the clearest exponent of sense realism in teaching up to his time, and for more than a century afterward.

Deeply religious by nature and training, Comenius held the Holy Scriptures to contain the beginning and end of all learning; to know God aright he held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended that the education of every human being was a necessity if mankind was to enter into its religious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were to be brought to their fruition. Unlike those who were enthusiasts for religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was needed. Still more, he believed in the education of human beings simply because they were human beings, and not merely for salvation, as Luther had held.

Comenius was the first to formulate a practicable school method, working along the new lines marked out by Bacon. He had no psychology to guide him, and worked largely by analogies from nature. A great idea with him was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the conclusions that education should proceed from the easy to the difficult, the near to the remote, the general to the special, and the known to the unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was imparting and guiding, and not storing the memory. These conclusions seem commonplaces to us of to-day, but what is commonplace today was genius three hundred years ago. To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie new knowledge to old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by precept—were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Comenius worked out and formulated in his Didactica Magna. [6] His plea for a mild and gentle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to the importance of early education, his careful gradation of the school, and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-emphasizing its importance—all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who saw deeply into the nature of the educational process.



COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS. In his Didactica Magna Comenius divided the school life of a child into four great divisions. The first concerned the period from infancy to the age of six, which he called The Mother School. For this period he wrote The School of Infancy (1628), a book intended primarily for parents, and one of such deep insight and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may still read it with interest and profit. In it he anticipated many of the ideas of the kindergarten of to-day. The next division was The Vernacular School, which covered the period from the ages of six to twelve. For this period six classes were to be provided, and the emphasis was to be on the mother tongue. This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all of which, says Comenius, can be taught better through the mother tongue than through the medium of the Latin and Greek. In scope this school corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe.

The next school was The Latin School, covering the years from twelve to eighteen, and in this German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were to be taught, by improved methods, and with physics and mathematics added. This school he divided into six classes, named from the principal study in each, as follows: (1) Grammar, (2) Physics, (3) Mathematics, (4) Ethics, (5) Dialectics, (6) Rhetoric. He also later outlined a plan for a six-class Gymnasium for Saros-Patak (R. 220), culminating in a seventh year for preparation for the ministry, which was an improvement on the Latin School and very modern in character. Had such a school become common, secondary education in Europe might have been a century in advance of where the nineteenth century found it. The Latin school was to be attended only by those of ability who were likely to enter the service of Church or State, or who intended to pass on to the University. This last was to cover the period from eighteen to twenty-four. Unlike all educational practice of his time and later, Comenius here provides for an educational ladder of the present-day American type, wholly unlike the European two-class school system which (p. 353) later evolved.

COMENIUS' WORK IN REFORMING LANGUAGE TEACHING. At the time Comenius lived and wrote, the languages constituted almost the only subject of study, and Latin grammar was the great introductory subject. The mediaeval grammars (Donatus; Alexander de Villa Dei; pp. 156, 155) had been so poor that the instruction was difficult and, in consequence, long drawn out. Lily's Latin Grammar (p. 276), published in 1513, and Melanchthon's Latin Grammar, published in 1525, had represented marked advances. Still the subject remained difficult, even when taught from these new types of grammars. Comenius early became convinced, as a result of his teaching and studies in educational method, that the ancient classical authors were not only too difficult for boys beginning the study of Latin, but that they also did not contain the type of real knowledge he felt should be taught in the schools. He accordingly set to work to construct a series of introductory Latin readers which would form a graded introduction to the study of Latin, and which would also introduce the pupil to the type of world knowledge and scientific information he felt should be taught.

His plan eventually embraced a graded series of five books, as follows:

1. The Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or the World of Sense Objects Pictured. This was an illustrated primer and first reader, which appeared in 1658, and was the first illustrated book ever written for children (R. 221).

2. The Vestibulum (Vestibule, or gate). An easy first reader, consisting of but a few hundred of the most commonly used Latin words and sentences, with a translation into the vernacular in parallel columns. This book required about a half-year for its completion.

3. The Janua Linguarum Reserata, or Gate of Languages Unlocked. This was the first of the series printed (1631), the Vestibulum being an easy introduction to it, and the Orbis Pictus being the Janua simplified and illustrated. The Janua contained some eight thousand Latin words, arranged in simple sentences, with the vernacular equivalent in parallel columns; included information on a variety of subjects; [7] and was a regular Noah's Ark for vocabulary purposes. It embraced sufficient reading material and grammar for a year.

4. The Atrium. This was an expansion of the Janua, and treated the same topics more in detail. It was intended to be an advanced reader, based, as was the Janua, on studies about the real things of life. The vocabulary now was Latin-Latin, instead of Latin-vernacular.

5. The Thesaurus, which was never completed, but was planned to be a collection of graded extracts from easy Latin authors—Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Pliny—to furnish the needed reading material for the three upper years of the Latin School.

THE TEXTBOOKS ILLUSTRATED. Beginning in the Janua, and afterwards in the Vestibulum and Orbis Pictus as well, Comenius not only simplified the teaching of Latin by producing the best textbooks for instruction in the subject the world had ever known, but he also shifted the whole emphasis in instruction from words to things, and made the teaching of scientific knowledge and useful world information the keynote of his work. The hundred different chapters of the Janua, and the hundred and fifty-one chapters of the Orbis Pictus, were devoted to imparting information as to all kinds of useful subjects. The following selections from the chapter titles of the Orbis Pictus illustrate how large a place the new scientific studies occupied in his conception of the school:

The World Birds Weaving Philosophy The Heavens Cattle Tailor Prudence Fire Fish Barber Diligence Wind Parts of Man Schoolmaster Temperance Water Flesh and Bowels Shoemaker Fortitude Clouds Chanels and Bones Carpenter Humanity Earth Senses Potter Justice Fruits Deformities Printing Consanguinity Metals Husbandry Geometry A City Trees Bees and Honey The Planets Merchandizing Herbs Butchery Eclipses A Burial Flowers Cookery Europe Religious Forms

The accompanying illustrations (Figs. 126, 127) reveal the nature of the text-books he prepared. (See also R. 221 for four additional pages of illustrations from the Orbis Pictus.)



The success of these textbooks was immediate and very great. Within a short time after the publication of the Janua it had been translated into Flemish, Bohemian, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as into Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, and Turkish. The Orbis Pictus was an even greater success. [8] It went through many editions, in many languages; stood without a competitor in Europe for a hundred and fifteen years; and was used as an introductory textbook for nearly two hundred years. An American edition was brought out in New York City, as late as 1810.



Thousands of parents, who knew nothing of Comenius and cared nothing for his educational ideas, bought the book for their children because they found that they liked the pictures and learned the language easily from it. [9]

PLACE AND INFLUENCE OF COMENIUS. Comenius stands in the history of education in a position of commanding importance. He introduces the whole modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the modern movements for the improvement of educational procedure. What Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wycliffe was to religious thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and Descartes were to modern philosophy, Comenius was to educational practice and thinking (R. 222). The germ of almost all eighteenth- and nineteenth- century educational theory is to be found in his work, and he, more than any one before him and for at least two centuries after him, made an earnest effort to introduce the new science studies into the school. Far more liberal than his Lutheran or Calvinistic or Anglican or Catholic contemporaries, he planned his school for the education of youth in religion and learning and to fit them for the needs of a modern world. Unlike the textbooks of his time, and for more than a century afterward, his were free from either sectarian bigotry or the intense and gloomy atmosphere of the age.

Yet Comenius lived at an unfortunate period in the history of human progress. The early part of the seventeenth century was not a time when an enthusiastic and aggressive and liberal-minded reformer could expect much of a hearing anywhere in western Europe. The shock of the contest into which western Christendom had been plunged by the challenge of Luther had been felt in every corner of Europe, and the culmination of a century of warfare was then raging, with all the bitterness and brutality that a religious motive develops. Christian Europe was too filled with an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to consider reforms for the improvement of the education of mankind. As a result the far-reaching changes in method formulated by Comenius made but slight impression on his contemporaries; his attempt to introduce scientific studies awakened suspicion, rather than interest; and the new method which he formulated in his Great Didactic was ignored and the book itself was forgotten for centuries. His great influence on educational progress was through the reform his textbooks worked in the teaching of Latin, and the slow infiltration into the schools of the scientific ideas they contained. As a result, many of the fundamentally sound reforms for which he stood had to be worked out anew in the nineteenth century. It is sad to contemplate how far our western world might have been advanced in its educational organization and scientific progress, by the close of the eighteenth century, had it been in a mood to receive and utilize the reforms in aims and methods, and to accept the new scientific subject-matter, proposed and worked out by this far-sighted Moravian teacher. Religious bigotry has, in all lands and ages, proved itself one of the most serious of all obstacles in the path of human progress.

IV. REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS

THE VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. The ideas for which the realists just described had stood were adopted in the people's schools but slowly, and came only after long waiting. The final incorporation of science instruction into elementary education did not come until the nineteenth century, and then was an outgrowth of the reform work of Pestalozzi on the one hand, and the new social, political, economic, and industrial forces of a modern world on the other.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed a century of bitter and vindictive religious warfare, was followed by another century of hatred, suspicion, and narrow religious intolerance and reaction. All parties now adopted an extremely conservative attitude in matters of religion and education, and the protection of orthodoxy became the chief purpose of the school. Reading, religion, a little counting and writing, and, in Teutonic lands, music, came to constitute the curriculum of such elementary vernacular schools as had come to exist, and the religious Primer and the Bible became the great school textbooks. The people were poor, much of Europe was impoverished and depopulated as a result of long-continued religious strife, the common people still occupied a very low social position, there were as yet no qualified teachers, and no need for general education aside from religion. Still more, during more than a thousand years the Church had established the tradition of providing free education, and when the governing authorities of the States which turned to Protestantism had taken from the Church both the opportunity to continue the schools and the wealth with which to maintain them, they were seldom willing to tax themselves to set up institutions to continue the work formerly done gratis by the Church. In consequence, regardless of Protestant educational theory as to the need for general education, but little progress in providing vernacular schools was made during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Here and there in Teutonic lands, however, the new studies found an occasional patron. In 1619 schools were organized for the little Duchy of Weimar (p. 317) by a pupil of Ratke, and sense realism was given a place in them. The schoolmaster, Andreas Reyher, who in 1642 drew up the Schule Methodus "the actual title of that book was 'Schulmethodus" for Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg, was familiar with the work of both Ratke and Comenius, and made provision for instruction in "the natural and useful sciences" (R. 163) for Duke Ernest's children. Here and there a few other attempts to provide schools and add instruction in the new Realien were made. The number of such attempts was not large, but their work was influential, and as a result vernacular schools and science instruction finally became established among German-speaking peoples before they did in any other land.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The influence of Milton's Tractate on the non- conformist Academies of England has been traced, and the transfer of the idea of instruction in the new mathematical, scientific, literary, historical, and political subjects to the new American Academies has been mentioned. That these new studies also entered into the education of a gentleman in England and France, under the private-tutor and the courtly- academy system, and were copied from the French and constituted a large part of the instruction organized for the Ritterakademieen of the numerous court cities in German lands, has also been mentioned. In both England and France such private instruction exerted but little influence on the existing Latin grammar schools, and in consequence the schools of both countries remained largely unchanged in direction and purpose until the second half of the nineteenth century. In German lands the Ritterakademieen idea experienced a further development, which proved to be of large importance for the future of German education.

FRANCKE'S "INSTITUTIONS." With the introduction of French ideas and training into the German courts, French skepticism in matters of religion developed in the court circles. Under the influence of a pious Lutheran clergyman, Philip Spener (1635-1705), who tried to emphasize religion as an affair of the heart rather than the head; and especially as a result of the work of his spiritual successor, Augustus Hermann Francke, a movement arose in German lands, during the closing years of the seventeenth century, which became known as Pietism. [10] Disgusted with the lifeless and insincere religion of the time, these two strove to substitute a religion of both head and heart. In 1695, moved by pity for the poor, Francke established at Halle the first of his famous "Institutions,"—a school for poor children. A pay school for the well-to-do was soon added, and soon another school for the children of nobility. An orphan school also was in time provided. The school for the poor developed into a vernacular or Burgher (volks; peoples) school; the school for the pay pupils into a Latin School, or Gymnasium; and the school for nobles into a higher scientific school, or Paedagogium as it was called. At first Francke encountered some theological opposition, but the "Institutions" prospered, and at the time of his death contained over 2200 pupils, and over 300 teachers, workers, and attendants.



The interesting thing about Francke's work was the courses of instruction he provided for his schools. [11] In the Burgher School he gave the children instruction in history, geography, and animal life, in addition to the reading, writing, counting, music, and religion of the usual German vernacular school. Into the Gymnasium he introduced instruction in history, geography, music, science, and mathematics, in addition to the usual Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He also changed the purpose of the language instruction. Greek was studied to be able to read the New Testament in the original, and Hebrew better to understand the Old. The Paedagogium was provided with a botanical garden, a cabinet of natural history, physical apparatus, a laboratory for the study of chemistry and anatomy, and a workshop for turning and glass-cutting. Independent of the work of Comenius, but as an outgrowth of the new movement for the study of science now beginning to influence educational thought, we have here the most important attempt at the introduction into the school of sense realism, or Realien, as the Germans say, that the modern world had so far witnessed. In 1697 Francke added a Seminarium Praeceptorium, to train teachers in his new ideas. This was the first teachers' training- school in German lands, and the teachers he trained served to scatter his educational ideas over the German States. [12]

THE FIRST REALSCHULE. Associated with Francke as a teacher was one Christopher Semler (1669-1740), who became deeply interested in the new studies of the secondary school. In 1706 Semler had submitted a plan to the government of Magdeburg for the teaching of the practical studies. This was referred to the Berlin Society of Sciences, which approved the plan, and later elected Semler to membership in the Society. For years Semler continued as a teacher at Halle, but without carrying the idea far enough to create a new type of school. In 1739 Semler published a paper "Upon the Mathematical, Mechanical, and Agricultural Real School in the City of Halle," in which he described the instruction given there. This was probably the first use of the term "real school" (Realschule). The important subjects described as taught, aside from religion, were "the useful and in daily life wholly indispensable sciences," such as mathematics, drawing, geography, history, natural history, agriculture, and economics, with much emphasis on observation by the pupils.

The work at Halle soon stimulated complaints as to the existing Latin schools, where children, destined for business or the service of the State, were kept trying to learn Latin, "to the neglect of more practical and more useful studies." The usefulness of the new real studies now began to be more correctly estimated, and the conviction gradually grew that those boys who were destined for trade—now a rapidly increasing number— should not be obliged to follow the same course as those destined to be scholars. In 1720 Rector Gesner, of the gymnasium at Rotenburg, wrote, rather sarcastically:

The one class, who will not study, but will become tradesmen, merchants, or soldiers, must be instructed in writing, arithmetic, writing letters, geography, description of the world, and history. The other class may be trained for studying.

In 1742 the Rector at Dresden, Schoettgen, issued a "Humble proposal for the special class in public city schools" to provide for those children "who are to remain without (that is, cannot learn) Latin." Instead of forcing them to attempt to learn Donatus, which he said was useless for them, he urged that a special class (school) be organized to train them to become useful merchants, artists, and mechanics. In 1751 Rector Henzky, of Prenzlau, issued a treatise to show "That Real schools can and must become common." In 1756 Gesner, professor at the new University of Goettingen, in a pamphlet "On the organization of a gymnasium" (R. 223), urged that there were three classes of youths for whom schools should be provided, one of which needed the Realschule.

In 1747 a clergyman by the name of Julius Hecker (1707-1768), who had been a pupil in, and later had taught in Francke's "'Institutions," went to Berlin and opened there the first distinct German Realschule. In this school Hecker provided instruction in religion, ethics, German, French, Latin, mathematics, drawing, history, geography, mechanics, architecture, and a knowledge of nature and of the human body. Classes were organized in architecture, agriculture, bookkeeping, manufacturing, and mining. The school prospered from the first, and in time became the "Royal Realschule" of Berlin. In answer to a growing demand for advanced education for that constantly increasing number of youths destined for the trades or a mercantile career, the realschule idea was copied in a number of the important cities of Germany. Thus early—a century in advance of other nations, and a century and a quarter ahead of the United States—did Prussia lay the foundations of that scientific and technical education which, later on, did so much toward creating modern industrial Germany.

THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEW SCIENTIFIC LEARNING. Though the theological persecution of scientific workers largely died out after about the middle of the seventeenth century, and was never much of a factor in lands which had embraced some form of Protestantism, the new sciences nevertheless made but little headway in the universities until after the beginning of the eighteenth century. Up to the close of the seventeenth century the universities in all lands continued to be dominated by their theological faculties, and instruction still remained largely encompassed by mediaevalism. England represents perhaps the most notable exception to this statement, scientific studies having been received with greater tolerance by the universities there than in other lands. In both Catholic and Protestant lands the need was felt for orthodox training, through fear of further heresy, and many petty restrictions were thrown about study and teaching which were stifling to free thinking and investigation. Each little Kingdom or State now took over the supervision of some old university within its borders, or established a new one, that it might more completely control orthodoxy and prepare its own civil servants. Of the seventeenth century, Paulsen [13] well says:

It was essentially the period of the territorial-confessional university, and is characterized by a preponderance of theological- confessional interest.... Many new foundations, both Catholic and Protestant, now appeared. The chief impetus leading to these numerous foundations was the accentuation of the principle of territorial sovereignty, from the ecclesiastical as well as the political point of view. The consequence was that the universities began to be instrumentia denominationis of the government as professional schools for its ecclesiastical and secular officials. Each individual government endeavored to secure its own university in order—(1) to make sure of wholesome instruction, which meant, of course, instruction in harmony with the confessional standards of its established church; (2) to retain training of its secular officials in its own hands; and finally (3) render attendance at foreign universities unnecessary on the part of its subjects, and thus keep the money in the country.

Large amounts of money were not needed to establish a new university. A few thousand guilders or thalers sufficed for the salaries of ten or fifteen professors, a couple of preachers and physicians would undertake the theological and medical lectures, and some old monastery would supply the needed buildings.

After the Reformation the law faculty increased to the place of first importance in Protestant lands, because the Reformation had created a new demand for judges and higher court officials to replace the rule of the clergy. The medical faculty continued to be, as in the mediaeval universities, the smallest of all the faculties and amounted to little before the nineteenth century. [14] The arts faculty, or philosophical as it came to be termed in German lands, offered lectures in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and a general course in philosophy, but the Aristotelian texts and to some extent mediaeval methods in instruction continued to be used until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Here and there some professor "read" on mathematics, and in Protestant lands on the new astronomy, and the study of botany began as the study of herbs in the medical faculty, [15] but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries few professors or students were interested in the scientific subjects. By 1675 Bacon's Novum Organum had begun to be taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and by 1700 the Newtonian physics had begun to displace Aristotle at Oxford. By 1740 it was well established there. At first instruction in the new subjects was offered as an extra and for a fee by men not having professional rank (R. 224), and later the instruction was given full recognition by the university. By 1700 Cambridge had become a center for mathematical study (R. 225), and with the growth in popularity of the Newtonian philosophy, mathematical studies there took the place held by logic in the mediaeval university. Cambridge has ever since remained a center for mathematical and, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for scientific studies as well. Between 1680 and 1700 the University of Paris was reformed, and the mathematical and philosophical studies of Descartes (p. 394) began to be taught there. The universities of the Netherlands began to teach the new mathematical and scientific studies even earlier.

Aside from the above described Realschule development, the new scientific movement for a time largely passed over German lands, and in consequence the German universities remained unreformed until the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century they sank to their lowest intellectual level. In 1694, largely in protest against the narrowness of the old universities, the new University of Halle was founded. It received into its faculty certain forward-looking men who had been driven from the old universities, [16] and is generally considered as the first modern university. The new scientific and mathematical subjects and a reformed philosophy were introduced; the instruction in Greek and Latin was reformed; German was made the medium of classroom instruction; and a scientific magazine in German was begun. In 1737 the University of Goettingen became a second center of modern influence, and from these two institutions the new scientific spirit gradually spread to all the Protestant universities of German lands. A century later they were the leading universities of the world.

THE TRANSITION NOW PRACTICALLY COMPLETE. From the time Petrarch made his first "find" at Liege (1333), in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero (p. 244), to the publication of the Principia (p. 388) of Newton (1687), is a period of approximately three and a half centuries. During these three and a half centuries a complete transformation of world-life had been effected, and the mediaeval man, with his eyes on the past, had given place to the modern man with his eyes on the future. During these three and a half centuries revolutionary forces had been at work in the world of ideas, and the transition from mediaeval to modern attitudes had been accomplished. From 1333 to 1433 was the century of "literary finds," and during this period the monastic treasures were brought to light and edited and the classical literature of Rome restored. Greek also was restored to the western world, and a reformed Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given the place of first importance in the new humanistic school. The invention of printing took place in 1423; 1456 witnessed the appearance of the first printed book, and the perfection of the new means for the multiplication of books and the dissemination of ideas. Before 1500 the great era of geographical discovery had been inaugurated; a sea-route to India was found in 1487; and a new continent in 1492. In 1519-22 Magellan's ships rounded the world.

In 1517 Luther issued the challenge, the shock of which was felt in every corner of Christian Europe, and within a half-century much of northern and western Europe had been lost to the original Roman Church. Soon independence in thinking had been extended to the problem of the organization of the universe, and in 1543 Copernicus issued the book that clearly marks the beginning of modern scientific thinking and inquiry. Bacon had done his organizing work by 1620, and Newton's Principia (1687) finally established modern scientific thought and work. Comenius died in 1671, his great organizing work done, and his textbooks, with their many new educational ideas, in use all over Europe. The mediaeval attitude still continued in religion and government, but the world as a whole had left mediaeval attitudes behind it, and was facing the future of modern world organization and life. To the educational organization of this modern world we now turn, though before doing so we shall try to present a cross-section, as it were, of the development in educational theory and practice which had been attained by about the middle of the eighteenth century.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Explain why the scholars of the time were so intent on producing a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world.

2. Show that a reaction against humanism was certain to arise, and why.

3. How do you explain the very small influence exerted on the Latin grammar schools of England by the non-conformist Academies, after they had been absorbed into the existing English non-state system of higher schools?

4. Compare Milton and Montaigne.

5. What would be the most probable effect on education of the erection of the polished-man-of-the-world ideal?

6. Enumerate the forces favoring and opposing the change of the language of instruction from Latin to the vernacular.

7. How many of the thirteen principles of the Innovators do we still hold to be valid?

8. Just what was new in the nine fundamental rules laid down by Ratke, in his Methodus Nova?

9. What is your estimate of the vernacular schools as outlined by Comenius? Of the plans for a gymnasium at Saros-Patak?

10. Compare Comenius' Latin school with the College of Calvin.

11. State the new ideas in instruction embodied in the textbooks of Comenius.

12. Show that Comenius dominates modern educational ideas, even though his work was largely lost, in the same way that Petrarch or Wyclifle or Copernicus do modern work in their fields.

13. Explain the very slow development of vernacular schools after the Protestant Revolts.

14. Why would the introduction of real studies into them be especially slow?

15. What explanation can you offer for the much earlier beginnings in scientific instruction in German lands than in England or America, when much more of the important early scientific work was done by Englishmen than by Germans? and the failure of science for a time to find a home in the German universities?

16. Explain the continued dominance of the theological faculty in the universities of the seventeenth century.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following illustrative selections are reproduced:

210. Rabelais: On the Nature of Education. 211. Milton: The Aim and Purpose of Education. 212. Milton: His Program for Study. 213. Adamson: Discontent of the Nobility with the Schools. 214. Montaigne: Ridicule of the Humanistic Pedants. 215. Montaigne: His Conception of Education. 216. Locke: Extracts from his Thoughts on Education. 217. Locke: Plan for Working Schools for Poor Children. 218. Comenius: Title-Page of the Great Didactic. 219. Comenius: Contents of the Great Didactic. 220. Comenius: Plan for the Gymnasium at Saros-Patak. 221. Comenius: Sample pages from the Orbis Pictus. (a) A page from a Latin-German edition of 1740. (b) Two pages from a Latin-English edition of 1727. (c) A page from the New York edition of 1810. 222. Butler: Place of Comenius in the History of Education. 223. Gesner: Need for Realschulen for the New Classes to be Educated. 224. Handbill: How the Scientific Studies began at Cambridge. 225. Green: Cambridge Scheme of Study of 1707.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Show that Rabelais was in close sympathy with the best of the new humanists of his age.

2. Would Milton's definition of the purpose of education be true, still?

3. Show from Milton's program of studies that he represents a transition type, and also that his program contains the nucleus of the more modern studies of the secondary school.

4. Explain the discontent of the nobility with the existing Church schools.

5. Assuming Montaigne's description of the education of his time to be true, explain why this might naturally be the case.

6. Just what kind of an education does Montaigne outline, and how great a reaction was this from existing conditions?

7. In how far would Locke's ideas still apply to the education of a boy of the leisure class?

8. Show that Locke's plan for work-house schools was in thorough accord with English post-Reformation ideas as to the duty of the State in matters of education, and also that it contained the beginnings of the pauper- school idea of education which we later had to combat.

9. From the title-page and the table of contents (219) of Comenius' Great Didactic, point out the originality and novelty of his ideas.

10. Compare Comenius' plan for the Saros-Patak Gymnasium with such schools as Sturm's, the college of Guyenne, the college of Calvin, and the Jesuits.

11. Compare Comenius' plan (220) with the instruction in an American high school of seventy-five years ago.

12. Compare the Alphabet page of Comenius' Orbis Pictus with the same page in the New England Primer.

13. When so many educational reforms were inaugurated so early by Comenius, explain their neglect, and our having to work them out anew in the nineteenth century.

14. What does the need for Realschulen indicate as to the evolution of German society and the recuperation from the ravages of war?

15. Compare the beginnings of scientific study at Cambridge with beginnings of new subjects to-day in our schools.

16. Just what does the Cambridge Scheme of Study indicate as being taught there?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adamson, J. W. Pioneers of Modern Education, 1600-1700. Barnard, Henry. German Teachers and Educators. * Butler, N. M. "The Place of Comenius in the History of Education": in Proc. N. E. A., 1892, pp. 723-28. Browning, Oscar, Editor. Milton's Tractate on Education. * Comenius, J. A. Orbis Pictus (Bardeen; Syracuse). Hanus, Paul H. "The Permanent Influence of Comenius"; in Educational Review, vol. 3, pp. 226-36 (March, 1892). Laurie, S. S. History of Educational Opinion since the Renaissance. * Laurie, S. S. John Amos Comenius. Quick, R. H., Editor. Locke's Thoughts on Education. * Quick, R. H. Essays on Educational Reformers. * Vostrovsky, Clara. "A European School of the Time of Comenius (Prague, 1609)"; in Education, vol. 17, pp. 356-60 (February, 1897.) Wordsworth, Christopher. Scholae Academicae; Studies at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century.



CHAPTER XVIII

THEORY AND PRACTICE BY THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

We have now reached, in our history of the transition age which began with the Revival of Learning—the great events of which were the recovery of the ancient learning, the rediscovery of the historic past, the reawakening of scholarship, and the rise of religious and scientific inquiry—the end of the transition period, and we are now ready to pass to a study of the development and progress of education in modern times. Before doing so, however, we desire to gather up and state the progress in both educational theory and practice which had been attained by the end of this transition period, and to present, as it were, a cross-section of education at about the middle of the eighteenth century. To do this, then, before passing to a consideration of educational development in modern times, will be the purpose of this chapter. We shall first review the progress made in evolving a theory as to the educational purpose, and then present a cross-section view of the schools of the time under consideration.

I. PRE-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

THE STATE PURPOSE OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. As we saw, early in our study of the rise and progress of the education of peoples, the City-States of Greece were the first consciously to evolve a systematic plan of schooling and a prolonged course of training for those who were to guide and direct the State. In Sparta the training was almost wholly for military efficiency and tribal safety, but in Athens we found a people using a well-worked-out system of training to develop individual initiative, advance civilization, and promote the welfare of the State. The education provided was for but a class, to be sure, and a small ruling class at that, but it was the first evidence of the new western, individualistic, and democratic spirit expressing itself in the education of the young. There also we found, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing education as a necessity to make life worth living and to secure the State from dangers, both without and within. The training there given produced wonderful results, and for two centuries the men educated by it ably guided the destinies of Athens.

The essentials of this Greek training were later embodied in the private- adventure school system that arose in Rome, which was adapted to conditions and needs there, and which was used for the training of a few Roman youths of the wealthier families for a political career. Schooling at Rome, though, never attained the importance or rendered the service that characterized education at Athens, and never became an instrument of the State used consciously for State ends. One Roman writer, Quintilian, as we have seen (R. 25), worked out a careful statement of the whole process of educating a youth for a public career, and this, the first practical treatise on education, was for long highly prized as the best- written statement of the educational art.

THE FUTURE-LIFE CONCEPTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. With the decline of Roman power and influence, and the victory of Christianity throughout the Roman world, the State conception of education was entirely lost to western Europe, and more than a thousand years elapsed before it again arose in the western world. The Church now became the State, and the need for any education for secular life almost entirely passed away. For centuries the aim was almost entirely a preparation for life in the world to come. Throughout all the early Middle Ages this attitude continued, supplemented only by the meager education of a few to carry on the work of the Church here below.

After the tenth century we noted the rise of some more or less independent study in some of the monastery and cathedral schools, and after the twelfth century the rise of studia generalia marked the congregation into groups of the few interested in a studious life. These in turn gave rise to the university foundations, and to the beginning of independent and secular study once more in the western world. The Revival of Learning, the recovery of the ancient manuscripts, the revival of the study of Greek in the West, the founding of libraries, the invention of paper and printing, and the revival of trade and commerce—all were new forces tending to give a new direction to scholarly study, and as a result a new race of scholars, more or less independent of the Church, now arose in western Europe. They were, however, a class, and a very small class at that, and though the result of their work was the creation of a new humanistic secondary school, this still ministered to the needs of but a few. This few was intended either for the service of the Church, for the governmental service of the towns which had by this time attained their independence, or for the governments of the rising principalities or states.

For the great mass of the people, whose purpose in life was to work and believe and obey, agriculture, warfare, the rising trades with their guilds (p. 209), and the services of the Church constituted almost all in the way of education which they ever received. To be useful to his overlord and master here and to be saved hereafter were the chief life- purposes of the common man. The former he must himself undertake in order to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to those who followed her teachings.

THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal versus collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. The aim was the same as before—personal salvation—but the method was now changed from that of the Church as intermediary to personal knowledge and faith and effort. To be saved, one must know something of the Word of God, and this necessitated instruction. To this end, in theory at least, schools had to be established to educate the young for membership in the new type of Church relationship. Reading the vernacular, a little counting and writing, in Teutonic countries a little music, and careful instruction in a religious Primer (R. 202), the Catechism, and the Bible, now came to constitute the subject matter of a new vernacular school for the children of Protestants, and to a certain extent in time for the children of Catholics as well. As we pointed out earlier (p. 353), between this new type of school for religious ends and the older Latin grammar school for scholarly purposes there was almost no relationship, and the two developed wholly independently of one another. In the Latin grammar schools one studied to become a scholar and a leader in the political or ecclesiastical world; in the vernacular religious school one learned to read that he might be able to read the Catechism and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was scarcely any other purpose to the maintenance of the elementary vernacular schools. This condition continued until well into the eighteenth century.



EARLY UNSUCCESSFUL EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. Back in the seventeenth century, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, a very earnest effort was made by Ratke and Comenius to introduce a larger conception of the educational process into the elementary vernacular school, to eliminate the gloomy religious material from the textbooks, to substitute a human- welfare purpose for the exclusively life-beyond view, and to transform the school into an institution for imparting both learning and religion. Comenius in particular hoped to make of the new elementary religious school a potent instrument for human progress by introducing new subject- matter, and by formulating laws and developing methods for its work which would be in harmony with the new scientific procedure so well stated by Francis Bacon. Comenius stands as the commanding figure in seventeenth- century pedagogical thought. He reasoned out and introduced us to the whole modern conception of the educational process and purpose, and gave to the school of the people a solid theoretical and practical basis. Living, though, at an unfortunate period in human history, he was able to awaken little interest either in rational teaching-method or in reforms looking to the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Instead he roused suspicion and distrust by the innovations and progressive reforms he proposed; his now-celebrated book on teaching method (Rs. 218, 219) was not at the time understood and was for long forgotten, while the fundamentally sound ideas and pedagogical reforms which he proposed and introduced were lost amid the hatreds of his time, and had to be worked out again and reestablished in a later and a more tolerant age.

Another unsuccessful reformer of some importance, and one whose work antedated that of both Ratke and Comenius, was the London schoolmaster, Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), for twenty-five years headmaster of the famous Merchant Taylors' School, and later Master of Saint Paul's School. In 1581 he issued his Positions, a pedagogical work so far in advance of his time, and written in such a heavy and affected style, that it passed almost unnoticed in England, and did not become known at all in other lands. Yet the things he stood for became the fundamental ideas of nineteenth-century educational thought. These were:

1. That the end and aim of education is to develop the body and the faculties of the mind, and to help nature to perfection.

2. That all teaching processes should be adapted to the pupil taught.

3. That the first stage in learning is of large importance, and requires high skill on the part of the teacher.

4. That the thing to be learned is of less importance than the pupil learning.

5. That proper brain development demands that pressure and one-sided education alike be avoided.

6. That the mother tongue should be taught first and well, and should be the language of the school from six to twelve.

7. That music and drawing should be taught.

8. That reading and writing at least should be the common right of all, and that girls should be given equal opportunity with boys.

9. That training colleges for teachers should be established and maintained.

The modern nature of many of Mulcaster's proposals may be seen from the table of contents of his volume (R. 226). Mulcaster, like Comenius, thought far in advance of his age, and in consequence his book was soon and for long forgotten. Yet what Quick [1] says of him is very true:

It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of the vernacular instead of Latin, and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If this were made to occupy the school time up to twelve, Mulcaster held that more would be done between twelve and sixteen than between seven and seventeen in the ordinary (Latin grammar school) way. There would be a further gain in that the children would not be set against learning.

John Locke, and the disciplinary theory of education. Another commanding figure in seventeenth-century pedagogical thought was the English scholar, philosopher, teacher, physician, and political writer, John Locke (1632- 1704). In the preceding chapter we pointed out the place of Locke as a writer on the education of the sons of the English gentry, and illustrated by an extract from his Thoughts (R. 216) the importance he placed on such a practical type of education as would prepare a gentleman's son for the social and political demands of a world fast becoming modern. Locke's place in the history of education, though, is of much more importance than was there (p. 402) indicated. Locke was essentially the founder of modern psychology, based on the application of the methods of modern scientific investigation to a study of the mind, [2] and he is also of importance in the history of educational thought as having set forth, at some length and with much detail, the disciplinary conception of the educational process.

Locke had served as a tutor in an English nobleman's family, had worked out his educational theories in practice and thought them through as mind processes, and had become thoroughly convinced that it was the process of learning that was important, rather than the thing learned. Education to him was a process of disciplining the body, fixing good habits, training the youth in moral situations, and training the mind through work with studies selected because of their disciplinary value. This conception of education he sets forth well in the following paragraph, taken from his Thoughts:

The great Work of the Governor is to fashion the Carriage and form the Mind; to settle in his Pupils good Habits and the Principles of Virtue and Wisdom; to give him by little and little a View of Mankind, and work him into a Love and Imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the Prosecution of it, to give him Vigor, Activity, and Industry. The Studies which he sets him upon, are but as it were the Exercise of his Faculties, and Employment of his Time, to keep him from Sauntering and Idleness, to teach him Application, and accustom him to take Pains, and to give him some little Taste of what his own Industry must perfect (sec 94).

In his Thoughts Locke first sets forth at length the necessity for disciplining the body by means of diet, exercise, and the hardening process. "A sound mind in a sound body" he conceives to be "a short but full description of a happy state in this world," and a fundamental basis for morality and learning. The formation of good habits and manners through proper training, and the proper adjustment of punishments and rewards next occupies his attention, and he then explains his theory as to making all punishments the natural consequences of acts. Similarly the mind, as the body, must be disciplined to virtue by training the child to deny, subordinate desires, and apply reason to acts. The formation of good habits and the disciplining of the desires Locke regards as the foundations of virtue. On this point he says:

As the Strength of the Body lies chiefly in being able to endure Hardship, so also does that of the Mind. And the great Principle and Foundation of all Virtue and Worth is plac'd in this:—That a Man is able to deny himself his own Desires, cross his own Inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as best, tho' the Appetite lean the other Way (sec 33).

Similarly, in intellectual education, good thinking and the employment of reason is the aim, and these, too, must be attained through the proper discipline of the mind. Good intellectual education does not consist merely in studying and learning, he contends, as was the common practice in the grammar schools of his time, but must be achieved by a proper drilling of the powers of the mind through the use of selected studies. The purpose of education, he holds, is above all else to make man a reasoning creature. Nothing, in his judgment, trains to reason closely so well as the study of mathematics, though Locke would have his boy "look into all sorts of knowledge," and train his understanding with a wide variety of exercises. In the education given in the grammar schools of his time he found much that seemed to him wasteful of time and thoroughly bad in principle, and he used much space to point out defects and describe better methods of teaching and management, giving in some detail reasons therefor. His ideas as to needed reforms in the teaching of Latin (R. 227) are illustrative.

LOCKE ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. For the beginnings of education, and for elementary education in general, Locke sticks close to the prevailing religious conception of his time. As for the education of the common people, he writes:

The knowledge of the Bible and the business of his own calling is enough for the ordinary man; a Gentleman ought to go further.

Continuing regarding the beginnings of education and the studies and textbooks of his day, he says:

The Lord's Prayer, the Creeds, and the Ten Commandments, 't is necessary he should learn perfectly by heart.... What other Books there are in English of the Kind of those above-mentioned (besides the Primer) fit to engage the Liking of Children, and tempt them to read, I do not know;... and nothing that I know has been considered of this Kind out of the ordinary Road of the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible (sec 157).

Locke does, however, give some very sensible suggestions as to the reading of the Bible (R. 228), the imparting of religious ideas to children, and the desirability of transforming instruction so as to make it pleasant and agreeable, with plenty of natural playful activity. [3] On this point he writes:

He that has found a Way how to keep up a Child's Spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many Things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to Things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education (sec 46).

INFLUENCE OF LOCKE'S THOUGHTS. The volume by Locke contains much that is sensible in the matter of educating a boy. The emphasis on habit formation, reasoning, physical activities and play, the individuality of children, and a reformed method in teaching are its strong points. The thoroughly modern character of the book, in most respects, is one of its marked characteristics. The volume seems to have been much read by middle and upper-class Englishmen, and copies of it have been found in so many old colonial collections that it was probably well known among early eighteenth-century American colonists. That the book had an important influence on the attitude of the higher social classes of England toward the education of their sons and, consciously or unconsciously, in time helped to redirect the teaching in that most characteristic of English educational institutions, the English Public (Latin Grammar) School, seems to be fairly clear. On elementary religious and charity-school education it had practically no influence.

Locke's great influence on educational thought did not come, though, for nearly three quarters of a century afterward, and it came then through the popularization of his best ideas by Rousseau. Karl Schmidt [4] well says of his work:

Locke is a thorough Englishman, and the principle underlying his education is the principle according to which the English people have developed. Hence his theory of education has in the history of pedagogy the same value that the English nation has in the history of the world. He stood in strong opposition to the scholastic and formalized education current in his time, a living protest against the prevailing pedantry; in the universal development of pedagogy he gives impulse to the movement which grounds education upon sound psychological principles, and lays stress upon breeding and the formation of character.

Restating and expanding the leading ideas of Locke in his Emile (chapter XXI), and putting them into far more attractive literary form, Rousseau scattered Locke's ideas as to educational reform over Europe. In particular Rousseau popularized Locke's ideas as to the replacement of authority by reason and investigation, his emphasis on physical activity and health, his contention that the education of children should be along lines that were natural and normal for children, and above all Locke's plea for education through the senses rather than the memory. In so popularizing Locke's ideas, and at a time when all the political tendencies of the period were in the direction of the rejection of authority and the emphasis of the individual, those educational reformers who were inspired by the writings of Rousseau created and applied, largely on the foundations laid down by John Locke, a new theory as to educational aims and procedure which dominated all early nineteenth-century instruction. This we shall trace further in a subsequent chapter (chapter XXI).

It was at this point that the educational problem stood, in so far as a theory as to educational aims and the educational process was concerned, when Rousseau took it up (1762). Before passing to a consideration of his work, though, and the work of those inspired by him and by the French revolutionary writers and statesmen, let us close this third part of our history by a brief survey of the development so far attained, the purpose, character, aims, and nature of instruction in the schools, and their means of support and control at about the middle of the century in which Rousseau wrote, and before the philosophical and political revolutions of the latter half of the eighteenth century had begun to influence educational aims and procedure and control.

II. MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS

THE PURPOSE. The purpose of maintaining the elementary vernacular school, in all European lands, remained at the middle of the eighteenth century much as it was a century before, though in the German States and in the American Colonies there was a noticeable shifting of emphasis from the older exclusively religious purpose toward a newer conception of education as preparation for life in the world here. Still, one learned to read chiefly "to learn some orthodox Catechism," "to read fluently in the New Testament," and to know the will of God, or, as stated in the law of the Connecticut Colony (R. 193), "in some competent measure to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation." The teacher was still carefully looked after as to his "soundness in the faith" (R. 238 a); he was required "to catechise his scholars in the principles of the Christian religion," and "to commend his labors amongst them unto God by prayer morning and evening, [5] taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same." The minister in practically all lands examined the children as to their knowledge of the Catechism and the Bible, and on his visits quizzed them as to the Sunday sermon. In Boston (1710) the ministers were required, on their school visits, to pray with the pupils, and "to entertain them with some instructions of piety adapted to their age." In Church-of-England schools "the End and Chief Design" of the schools established continued to be instruction in "the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion as Professed and Taught in the Church of England" (R. 238 b). In German lands the elementary vernacular school was still regarded as "the portico of the Temple," "Christianity its principal work," and not as "mere establishments preparatory to public life, but be pervaded by the religious spirit." [6] The uniform system of public schools ordered established for Prussia by Frederick the Great, in 1763, were after all little more than religious schools (R. 274), conducted for purposes of both Church and State. As Frederick expressed it, "we find it necessary and wholesome to have a good foundation laid in the schools by a rational and a Christian education of the young for the fear of God, and other useful ends." In the schools of La Salle's organization, which was most prominent in elementary vernacular education in Catholic France, the aim continued to be (R. 182) "to teach them to live honestly and uprightly, by instructing them in the principles of our holy religion and by teaching them Christian precepts."

WEAKENING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS THEORY. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, there is a noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory on the schools in most Protestant lands. In England there was a marked relaxation of the old religious intolerance in educational matters as the century proceeded, and new textbooks, embodying but little of the old gloomy religious material, appeared and began to be used. By a series of decisions, between 1670 and 1701 (chapter XXIV), the English courts broke the hold of the bishops in the matter of the licensing of elementary schoolmasters, and by the Acts of 1713 and 1714 the Dissenters were once more allowed to conduct schools of their own. Coincident with this growth of religious tolerance among the English we find the Church of England redoubling its efforts to hold the children of its adherents, by the organization of parish schools and the creation of a vast system of charitable religious schools. In German lands, too, a marked shifting of emphasis away from solely religious ends and toward the needs of the government began, toward the end of the eighteenth century, to be evident. In Wuertemberg, which was somewhat typical of late eighteenth-century action by other German States, a Circular of the General Synod, of November 1787, declares the German schools to be "those nurseries in which should be taught the true and genuine idea of the duties of men—created with a reasoning soul toward God, government, their fellow-men, and themselves, and also at least the first rudiments of useful and indispensable knowledge."

It was in the American Colonies, though, that the waning of the old religious interest was most notable. Due to rude frontier conditions, the decline in force of the old religious-town governments, the diversity of sects, the rise of new trade and civil interests, and the breakdown of old-home connections, the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines was weakened there earlier than in the old world. By 1750 the change in religious thinking in America had become quite marked. As a consequence many of the earlier parochial schools had died out, while in the New England Colonies the colonial governments had been forced to exercise an increasing state oversight of the elementary school to keep it from dying out there as well.

STUDIES AND TEXTBOOKS. The studies of the elementary vernacular school remained, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, much as before, namely, reading, a little writing and ciphering, some spelling, religion, and in Teutonic countries a little music. La Salle (R. 182) had prescribed, for the Catholic vernacular schools of France, instruction in French, some. Latin, "orthography, arithmetic, the matins and vespers, le Pater, l'Ave Maria, le Credo et le Confiteor, the Commandments, responses, Catechism, duties of a Christian, and maxims and precepts drawn from the Testament." The Catechism was to be taught one half-hour daily. The schoolbooks in England in Locke's day, as he tells us (p. 435), were "the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible." These indicate merely a religious vernacular school. The purpose stated for the English Church charity-schools (R. 238 b), schools that attained to large importance in England and the American Colonies during the eighteenth century, shows them to have been, similarly, religious vernacular schools. The School Regulations which Frederick the Great promulgated for Prussia (1763), fixed the textbooks to be used (R. 274, sec 20), and indicate that the instruction in Prussia was still restricted to reading, writing, religion, singing, and a little arithmetic. In colonial America, Noah Webster's description (R. 230) of the schools he attended in Connecticut, about 1764-70, shows that the studies and textbooks were "chiefly or wholly Dilworth's Spelling Books, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible," with a little writing and ciphering. A few words of description of these older books may prove useful here.



THE HORN BOOK. The Horn Book goes back to the close of the fifteenth century, [7] and by the end of the sixteenth century was in common use throughout England. Somewhat similar alphabet boards, lacking the handle, were also used in Holland, France, and in German lands. This, a thin oak board on which was pasted a printed slip, covered by translucent horn, was the book from which children learned their letters and began to read, the mastery of which usually required some time. Cowper thus describes this little book:

Neatly secured from being soiled or torn Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn, A book (to please us at a tender age 'T is called a book, though but a single page) Presents the prayer the Savior designed to teach, Which children use, and parsons—when they preach.

The Horn Book was much used well into the eighteenth century, but its reading matter was in time incorporated into the school Primer, now evolved out of an earlier elementary religious manual.

THE PRIMER. Originally the child next passed to the Catechism and the Bible, but about the middle of the seventeenth century the Primer began to be used. The Primer in its original form was a simple manual of devotion for the laity, compiled without any thought of its use in the schools. It contained the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and a few of the more commonly used prayers and psalms. [8] The Catechism soon was added, and with the prefixing of the alphabet and a few syllables and words it was transformed, as schools arose, into the first reading book for children. There was at first no attempt at grading, illustration, or the introduction of easy reading material. About the close of the seventeenth century the illustrated Primer, with some attempt at grading and some additional subject-matter, made its appearance, both in England and America, and at once leaped into great popularity.

The idea possibly goes back to the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius (p. 413: R. 221), the first illustrated schoolbook ever written. The first English Primer adapted to school use was The Protestant Tutor, a rather rabid anti-Catholic work which appeared in London, about 1685. A later edition of this contained the alphabet, some syllables and words, the figures and letters, the list of the books of the Bible, an alphabet of lessons, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and a poem, long famous, on the death of the martyr, John Rogers. [9] It was an abridgement of this book which the same publisher brought out in Boston, about 1690, under the name of The New England Primer (R. 202). This at once leaped into great popularity, and became the accepted reading book in all the schools of the American Colonies except those under the Church of England. For the next century and a quarter it was the chief school and reading book in use among the Dissenters and Lutherans in America. Schoolmasters drilled the children on the reading matter and the Catechism it contained, and the people recited from it yearly in the churches. It was also used for such spelling as was given. It was the first great American textbook success, and was still in use in the Boston dame schools as late as 1806. It was reprinted in England, and enjoyed a great sale among Dissenters there. Its sales in America alone have been estimated at least three million copies. The sale in Europe was also large. It was followed in England by other Primers and other introductory reading books, of which The History of Genesis (1708), a series of simple stories retold from the first book of the Bible, and The Child's Weeks-Work (1712), containing proverbs, fables, conundrums, lessons on behavior, and a short catechism, are types. Frederick the Great, in his list of required textbooks for Prussian schools (R. 274, sec 20), does not mention a Primer.



THE CATECHISM. In all Protestant German lands the Shorter Catechism prepared by Luther, or the later Heidelberg Catechism; in Calvinistic lands the Catechism of Calvin; and in England and the American Colonies the Westminster Catechism, [10] formed the backbone of the religious instruction. Teachers drilled their pupils in these as thoroughly as on any other subject, writing masters set as copies sentences from the book, children were required to memorize the answers, and the doctrines contained were emphasized by teacher and preacher so that the children were saturated with the religious ideas set forth. No book except the Bible did so much to form the character, and none so much to fix the religious bias of the children. Almost equal importance was given to the Catechism in Catholic lands (R. 182, sec 21-22), though there supplemented by more religious influences derived from the ceremonial of the Church.



SPELLERS. The next step forward, in the transition from the religious Primer to secular reading matter for school children, came in the use of the so-called Spellers. Probably the first of these was The English School-Master of Edmund Coote (R. 229), first issued in 1596. This gave thirty-two pages to the alphabet and spelling; eighteen to a shorter Catechism, prayers, and psalms; five to chronology; two to writing copies; two to arithmetic; and twenty to a list of hard words, alphabetically arranged and explained. As will be seen from this analysis of contents, this was a schoolmaster's general manual and guide. After about 1740 such books became very popular, due to the publication that year of Thomas Dilworth's A New Guide to the English Tongue. This book contained, as the title-page (R. 229) declared, selected lists of words with rules for their pronunciation, a short treatise on grammar, a collection of fables with illustrations for reading, some moral selections, and forms of prayer for children. It became very popular in New as well as in old England, and was followed by a long line of imitators, culminating in America in the publication of Noah Webster's famous blue-backed American Spelling Book, in 1783. This was after the plan of the English Dilworth, but was put in better teaching form. It contained numerous graded lists of words, some illustrations, a series of graded reading lessons, and was largely secular in character. It at once superseded the expiring New England Primer in most of the American cities, and continued popular in the United States for more than a hundred years. [11] It was the second great American textbook success, and was followed by a long list of popular Spellers and Readers, leading up to the excellent secular Readers of the present day.