A S H O R~T
HISTORY OP EDUCATION
BEING A REPRINT OF THE ARTICLE BY OSCAR BROWNING ON
EDUCATION
IN THE NINTH EDITION OF THE
ENCYLOP^EDIA BRITANNICA
Edited, with an Introduction, Notes and References, and some account of Comenius and his Writings,
BY
W . H . H A Y<NE?v L, L . D .
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY <>F NASHVILLE. AUTHOR OF *" CHAPTERS
ON SCHOOL SUPERVISION" ". " CONTRIIU' 1'IONS TO THE SCIENCE
OF EDUCATION ", ETC.
SYRACUSE, N. Y.
C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER
1897
Copyright, 1881, by W. II. PAYNE; 1897. by C. W. BARDEEX
JLAY3
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
New plates being required for this little *book, it has been thought best with the approval of the au- thor to add illustrations, and accordingly thirty-six portraits and eleven other pictures have been in- serted, with a few additional notes, mostly biblio- graphical.
SYRACUSE, April 16, 1897.
A S HO R~T
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
54
INTRODUCTION
In this country the purpose of normal instruction seems to be to prepare young men and women in the shortest and most direct way for doing school-room work. The equipment needed for this work is a knowledge of subjects and an empirical knowledge of methods; and so the normal schools furnish sound academic training, and pupils are taught methods of instruction by actual practice in experi- mental schools. In all this, the mechanical, or em- pirical, element seems to be held uppermost in thought. Pupils must be trained for practical ends ; they must, so to speak, be converted into instru- ments for doing prescribed work by prescribed methods; and anything that promises to detract from their value as machines, must be studiously avoided. The artisan thus appears to be the ideal product of the normal school.
I do not presume to say that this conception of the purpose of normal instruction is wrong. I claim only the right to think and to say that I hold an es- sentially different view, and that I am attempting to give professional instruction to teachers on a totally different hypothesis. I believe that the great bar to educational progress is the mechanical teaching that is so prevalent, and that is so fostered and encour-
(ix)
X SHORT HISTORY OF EDUCATION
\
aged by normal schools. I believe that an intelli- gent scholar, furnished with a few clearly defined principles, and free to throw his own personality into his methods, is far more likely to grow into an accomplished teacher than one who goes to his work with the conviction that he must follow prescribed patterns, and has not that versatility that comes from an extension of his intellectual horizon. The value of a teacher depends upon his worth as a man, rather than upon his value as an instrument. Man becomes an instrument only by losing worth as a man. In normal instruction there is need of greater faith in the potency of ideas, and less faith in the value of drill, imitation, and routine.
It is possible that in some grades of school work a purely mechanical teaching is best; that he is the best teacher who is most of an artisan, — with whom teaching is most of a handicraft. But I do not be- lieve this. The rules that are best for working on wood and stone are not the best when applied to mind and character. Undoubtedly, there is a me- chanical element in the teaching art ; but this is sub- ordinate to that other element that wholly escapes mechanical measurements, because it has to do with the manifestations of free spirit. In other words, I am persuaded that a teacher is poor to the degree in which he is an artisan, and good to the degree in which he is an artist ; and that nothing is so much needed by teachers of every class as an infusion of that freedom and versatility that are possible only through an extension of the mental vision by means of a more liberal culture.
INTRODUCTION XI
While I may be wrong in the general hypothesis, 1 feel that I am right in the following particulars: There must be some teachers who are more than mere instruments, more than operatives, more than artisans ; there must be some who can see processes .as they are related to law, — who, while obedient to law, can throw their own personality into their methods and can make such adaptations of them as varying circumstances may demand. If most teach- ers are doomed to be the slaves of routine, there must be some who have the ability to create and to control. In a word, along with the great multitude of mere teachers, there must be a growing body of educators. I cannot but think that in every normal school there are men and women who would love to walk upon these heights, to breathe this freer air, .and who would thus see in teaching a fair field for the exercise of their best gifts. The attention of such should be drawn somewhat away from the merely mechanical aspects of teaching, and fixed on those professional studies that will broaden the teacher's vision and give him the consciousness of some degree of creative power. The studies I mean .are EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE and EDUCATIONAL HIS- TORY.
It has been said that a teacher who is wholly ignor- .ant of the history of education may still do excellent work in the school-room. This does not admit of the least doubt. It is also true that men attain long lives in complete ignorance of the laws of digestion, and that they become voters and office- •holders while knowing nothing of their country's
Xll SHORT HISTORY OF EDUCATION
history; but it does not follow that physiology and history are needless studies. A fair knowledge of the history of one's own country is now thought to be an essential element in good citizenship; and I see no reason why a fair knowledge of the history of educational systems and doctrines should not form- a very desirable element in a teacher's education. He may teach well without this knowledge; but hav- ing it, he will feel an inspiring sense of the nobility of his calling, will teach more intelligently, and will give a richer quality to his work. Intelligent patri- otism is evoked by a vivid knowledge of Plymouth* Rock, of the American Revolution, and of Mountf Vernon ; and no teacher can think meanly of his- calling who has learned to trace his professional an- cestry through Plato, Comenius, Locke, Cousin, and Arnold.
As exhibiting the general grounds on which the history of education should be made a topic of in- struction for at least a part of the teaching class, I> repeat some observations made on another occasion.
" General history is a liberal study in the sense- that it greatly extends the horizon of our sympa- thies, widens our field of intellectual vision, and thus makes us cosmopolitan and catholic, — true citi- zens of the world. Historical study has also a very great practical value. It gives us the benefit of col- lective human experience as exhibited under every variety of circumstances and conditions. It relates the origin, succession, and termination of all the marked events in human progress. It thus saves us from repeating experiments already tried, forewarns-
INTRODUCTION Xlll
us against dangers that ever beset the path of the inexperienced, and assures to each generation the results of the real additions made to the stock of human progress.
" For the most part, the events recorded in history are the results of the unpremeditated actions of man Humanity at large seems to be impelled onward by an irresistible but unconscious impulse, just as a glacier moves over mountains and through valleys, with a silent yet irresistible might. This life of mere impulse is the lower life of nations and peoples, just as the period of impulse marks the lower and imperfect life of the individual. But in nations as well as in individuals, the period of reflection at last -comes, and this is the period when histories begin to be written and read. The effect of historical study is thus to check mere impulse, and to convert uncon- scious progress into self-conscious and reflective ^efforts towards determinate ends.
" In all nations that have passed beyond the period of mere barbarism, there has been some degree of con- scious and intended effort after progress, some pre- paration for the duties of citizenship, some attempt to make the future better than the past has been. This conscious effort to place each generation on a vantage-ground, through some deliberate training or preparation, is, in its widest sense, education.
" Now if history in general, as it records the uncon- scious phases of human progress, is a study of supreme value, that part of general history which records the reflective efforts of men to rise superior to their actual present, must teach lessons of even higher value. This is emphatically an educating age. The
XIV SHORT HISTORY OF EDUCATION
minds of the wisest and the best are intent on devis- ing means whereby progress may be hastened through the resources of human art. In the world of educa- tional thought, all is ferment and discussion. We are passing beyond the period of reckless experiment and are seeking anchorage in doctrines deduced from the permanent principles of human nature. Educa- tional Science is giving us a glimmer of light ahead, and we do well to shape our course by it. What ought to be should indeed be our pole-star; but until this has been defined with more precision, we should also shape our course by looking back on what has been. We should think of ourselves as moving through the darkness or over an unknown region, with a light before us and a light behind us. Our two inquiries should be. Whence have we come ? Whither are we going? Historical progress is tor- tuous, but its general direction is right. The history of what has been must therefore contain some elements of truth. The past at least foreshadows the future, and we may infer the direction of progress by comparing what has been with what is. In educa- tion, therefore, we need to know the past, both as a means'of taking stock of progress, and also of fore- shadowing the future. We should give a large place to the ideal elements in our courses of normal in- struction'; but we should also make a large use of the results of experience. All true progress is a transition. The past has insensibly led up to the present; let the present merge into the future. Let history foreshadow philosophy; and let philosophy introduce its corrections and ameliorations into the lessons of historv."
INTRODUCTION XV
An obstacle to the study of the history of educa- tion in this country, has been the lack of suitable books on this subject. In English we have only Schmidt's History of Education, and the History and Progress of Education by Philobiblius (L. P. Brock- ett). At best, these are mere outlines, and consid- ered as outlines, they are very imperfect and unsatis- factory. In seeking |or a text that I might make the basis of a short course of instruction for students in this university, I have found the article EDUCATION in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica admirably adapted to my purpose ; and I have thought that a reprint of it, under the title of A Short History of Education might be acceptable to the general reader, to intelligent and progressive teachers, and to the members of the profession who are engaged in the education of teachers. To make this outline more useful to teachers and students, I have added a select list of educational works, and have arranged a list of more important topics suggested by this outline, with references to these authorities. By this means the course of study may be extended almost at will. It may J^€ embrac^n merely this admirable outline, and thus occupy but a few days, or it may be pursued on the seminary plan, and thus indefinitely extended. I have considerably multiplied my notes and refer- ences on Comenius, in the hope of exciting an inter- est in the study of one of the greatest of the educa- tional reformers.
W. H. PAYNE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, January 22, 1881.
A Short History of Education
This article is mainly concerned with the history of educational theories in the chief crises of their development. It has not been the object of the writer to give a history of the practical working of these theories, and still less to sketch the outlines of the science of teaching, which may be more con- veniently dealt with under another head.
The earliest education is that of the family. The child must be trained not to interfere with its par- ents' convenience, and to acquire those little arts which will help in maintaining the economy of the household. It was long before any attempt was made to improve generations as they succeeded each other.
The earliest schools were those of the priests. As soon as an educated priesthood had taken the place of the diviners and jugglers who abused the credulity of the earliest races, schools of the prophets became a necessity. The training required for ceremonials, the common life apart from the family, the accomp- lishments of reading and singing, afforded a nucleus for the organization of culture and an opportunity for the efforts of a philosopher in advance of his age. Convenience and gratitude confirmed the monopoly of the clergy.
The schools of Judea and Egypt were ecclesiasti-
l8 , . (. ( , t .ANCIENT EDUCATION
cal. The Jews had but little effect on the progress of science, but our obligations to the priests of the Nile valley are great indeed. Much of their learn- ing is obscure to us, but we have reason to conclude that there is no branch of science in which they did not progress at least so far as observation and care- ful registration of facts could carry them. They were a source of enlightenment to surrounding nations. Not only the great lawgiver of the Jews, but those who were most active in stimulating the nascent energies of Hellas were careful to train themselves in the wisdom of the Egyptians.
Greece, in giving an undying name to the liter- ature of Alexander, was only repaying the debt which she had incurred centuries before. Educa- \ tion became secular in I countries where the priest- M hood did not exist as a m separate body. At Rome, until Greece took her con- queror captive, a child was ARISTOTLE, 384-332, B. c. trained for the duties of life in the forum and the senate house.
The Greeks were the first to develop a science of education distinct from ecclesiastical training. They divided their subjects of study into music and gymnastics, the one comprising all mental, the other all physical training. Music was at first little more than the study of the art of expression.
JUDEA, EGYPT, GREECE 19
But the range of intellectual education which had been developed by distin- guished musical teachers was further widened by the Sophists, until it received a new stimulus and direc- tion from the work of Soc- rates. Who can forget the picture left us by Plato of the Athenian palaestra, in
SOCRATES, 470-399, B. c. which Socrates was sure to find his most ready listeners and his most ardent disciples ? In the intervals of running, wrestling, or the bath, the young Phaedrus or Theaetetus dis- coursed with the philosophers who had come to watch them on the good, the beautiful, and the true. The lowest efforts of their teachers were to fit them to maintain any view they might adopt with acuteness, elegance, readiness, and good taste. Their highest efforts were to stimulate a craving for the knowledge of the unknowable, to rouse a dissatisfaction with received opinions, and to excite a curiosity which grew stronger with the revelation of each successive mystery.
Plato is the author of the first systematic treatise on education. He deals with the subject in his earlier dialogues, he enters into it with great fulness of detail in the Republic, and it occupies an important position in the Laws. The views thus expressed dif- fer considerably in particulars, -and it is therefore difficult to give concisely the precepts drawn up by him for our obedience. But the same spirit under
20
ANCIENT EDUCATION
lies his whole teaching. He never forgets that the beautiful is undistinguishable from the true, and that the mind is best fitted to solve difficult problems which has been trained by the enthusiastic contem- plation of art.
Plato proposes to intrust education to the state. He lays great stress on the influence of race and blood. Strong and worthy children are likely to spring from strong and worthy parents. Music and gymnastics are to develop the emotions of young men during their earliest years — the one to strengthen their character PLATO, 429-847, B. c. for the contest of life, the
other to excite in them varying feelings of resent- ment or tenderness. Reverence, the ornament of youth, is to be called forth by well-chosen fictions; a long and rigid training in science is to precede dis- cussion on more important subjects. At length the goal is reached, and the ripest wisdom is ready to be applied to the most important practice.
The great work of Quintilian, although mainly a treatise on oratory, also contains incidentally a com- plete sketch of a theoretical education. His object is to show us how to form the man of practice. But what a high conception of practice is his ! He wrote for a race of rulers. He inculcates much which has been attributed to the wisdom of a later age. He urges the importance of studying individual dispo-
ROME 21
sitions, and of tenderness in discipline and punish- ment.
The Romans understood no systematic training except in oratory. In their eyes every citizen was a born commander, and they knew of no science of government and political economy. Cicero speaks slightingly even of jurisprudence. Any one, he says, can make himself a jurisconsult in a week, but an orator is the production of a lifetime. No statement can be less true than that a perfect orator is a perfect, man. But wisdom and philanthrophy broke even through that barrier, and the training which Quin- tilian expounds to us as intended only for the public speaker would, in the language of Milton, fit a man to perform justly, wisely, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.
Such are the ideas which the old world has left us. On one side man, beautiful, active, clever, receptive, emotional, quick to feel, to show his feeling, to ar- gue, to refine; greedy of the pleasures of the world, perhaps a little neglectful of its duties, fearing re- straint as an unjust stinting of the bounty of nature, inquiring eagerly into every secret, strongly attached to the things of this life, but elevated by an unabated striving after the highest ideal ; setting no value but upon faultless abstractions, and seeing reality only in heaven, on earth mere shadows, phantoms, and copies of the unseen. On the other side, man, prac- tical, energetic, eloquent, tinged but not imbued with philosophy, trained to spare neither himself nor others, reading and thinking only with an apology ; best engaged in defending a political principle, in
22 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION -
maintaining with gravity and solemnity the conser- vation of ancient freedom, in leading armies through unexplored deserts, establishing roads, fortresses, settlements, the results of conquest, or in ordering and superintending the slow, certain, and utter anni- hilation of some enemy of Rome. Has the modern world ever surpassed their type? Can we in the present day produce anything by education except by combining, blending, and modifying the self- culture of the Greek or the self-sacrifice of the Roman ?
The literary education of the earliest generation of Christians was obtained in the pagan schools, in those great imperial academies which existed even down to the fifth century, which flourished in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and attained perhaps their highest development and efficiency in Gaul.
The first attempt to provide a special education for Christians was made at Alexandria, and is illustrated by the names of Clement and Origen. The later Latin fathers took a bolder stand, and rejected the suspicious aid of heathenism. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Jerome wished the antagonism between Christi- anity and Paganism to be recognized from the earli- est years, and even Augustine condemned with harshness the culture to which he owed so much of his influence.
The education of the Middle Ages was either that of the cloister or the castle. They stood in sharp contrast to each other. The object of the one was to form the young monk, of the other the young knight. We should indeed be ungrateful if we for-
THE MIDDLE AGES 23
got the services of those illustrious monasteries, Monte Cassino, Fulda, or Tours, which kept alive the torch of learning throughout the dark ages, but it would be equally mistaken to attach an exagger- ated importance to the teachings which they pro- vided. Long hours were spent in the duties of the church and in learning to take a part in elaborate and useless ceremonies. A most important part of the monastery was the writing-room, where missals, psalters, and breviaries were copied and illuminated, and too often a masterpiece of classic literature was effaced to make room for a treatise of one of the fathers or the sermon of an abbot.
The discipline was hard ; the rod ruled all with indiscriminating and impartial severity. How many generations have had to suffer for the floggings of those times ! Hatred of learning, antagonism between the teacher and the taught, the belief that no training can be effectual which is not repulsive and distaste- ful, that no subject is proper for instruction which is acquired with ease and pleasure — all these idols of false education have their root and origin in monk- ish cruelty. The joy of human life would have been in danger of being stamped out if it had not been for the warmth and color of a young knight's boy- hood. He was equally well broken in to obedience and hardship; but the obedience was the willing ser- vice of a mistress whom he loved, and the hardship the permission to share the dangers of a leader whom he emulated.
The seven arts of monkish training were Gram- mar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geom-
24 THE MIDDLE AGES
etry, Astronomy, which together formed the trivium and quadrivium, the seven years' course, the divisions of which have profoundly affected our modern training.
One of the earliest treatises based on this method was that of Martianus Capella, who in 470 published his Satyra, in nine books. The first two were devoted to the marriage between Philology and Mercury ; the last seven were each devoted to the consideration of one of these liberal arts. Cassiodorus, who wrote De Septcm Disciplinis about 500, was also largely used as a text-book in the schools. Astronomy was taught by the Cisio-Janus, a collection of doggrel hexameters like the Propria qua maribus, which con- tained the chief festivals in each month, with a memoria technica for recollecting when they occurred.
The seven knightly accomplishments, as historians tell us, were to ride, to swim, to shoot with the bow, to box, to hawk, to play chess, and to make verses. The verses thus made were not in Latin, bald imita- tions of Ovid or Horace, whose pagan beauties were wrested into the service of religion, but sonnets, ballads, and canzonets in soft Proven9al or melodious Italian.
In nothing, perhaps, is the difference between these two forms of education more clearly shown than in their relations to women. A young monk was brought up to regard a woman as the worst among the many temptations of St. Anthony. His life knew no domestic tenderness or affection. He was sur- rounded and cared for by celibates, to be himself a celibate. A page was trained to receive his best reward and worst punishment from the smile or
CONTRAST BETWEEN MONKS AND KNIGHTS 25
frown of the lady of the castle, and as he grew to manhood to cherish an absorbing passion as the strongest stimulus to a noble life, and the contem- plation of female virtue, as embodied in an Isolde or a Beatrice, as the truest earnest of future immor- tality.
Both these forms of education disappeared before the Renaissance and the Reformation. But we must not suppose that no efforts were made to improve upon the narrowness of the schoolmen or the idle- ness of chivalry. The schools of Charles the Great have lately been investigated by Mr. Mullinger, but we do not find that they materially advanced the science of education. Vincent of Beauvais has left us a very complete treatise on education, written about the year 1245. He was the friend and coun- sellor of St. Louis, and we may discern his influence in the instructions which were left by that sainted kingfor theguidanceof his son and daughter through life.
The end of this period was marked by the rise of universities. Bologna devoted itself to law, and num- bered 12,000 students at the end of the i2th century. Salerno adopted as its special province the study of medicine, and Paris was thronged with students from all parts of Europe, who were anxious to devote themselves to a theology which passed by indefinite gradations into philosophy. The i4th and i5th cen- turies witnessed the rise of universities and acade- mies in almost every portion of Europe.
Perhaps the most interesting among these precur- sors of a higher culture were the Brethren of the Common Life, who were domiciled in the rich
26 THE MIDDLE AGES
meadows of the Yssel, in the Northern Netherlands. The metropolis of their organization was Deventer, the best known name among them that of Gerhard Groote. They devoted themselves with all humility and self-sacrifice to the education of children. Their schools were crowded. Bois-le-Duc numbered 1200 pupils, Zwolle 1500. For a hundred years no part of Europe shone with a brighter lustre.
As the divine comedy of Dante represents for us the learning and piety of the Middle Ages in Italy, so the Imitation of Thomas a Kempis keeps alive for us the memory of the purity and sweetness of the Dutch community. But they had not sufficient strength to preserve their supremacy among the necessary developments of the age. They could not support the glare of the new Italian learning; they obtained, and it may be feared deserved, the title of obscurantists. The Epistolce Obscurorum Vir- orum, the wittiest squib of the Middle Ages, which was so true and so subtle in its satire that it was hailed as a blow struck in defence of the ancient learning, consists in great part of the lamentations of the brethren of Deventer over the new age, which they could not either comprehend or withstand.
The education of the Renaissance is best repre- sented by the name of Erasmus, that of the Reforma- tion by the names of Luther and Melanchthon. We have no space to give an account of that marvellous resurrection of the mind and spirit of Europe when touched by the dead hand of an extinct civilization. The history of the revival of letters belongs rather to the general history of literature than to that of education. But there are two names whom we ought not to pass over.
THE RENAISSANCE 27
Vittorino da Feltre was summoned by the Gon- zagas to Mantua in 1424 ; he was lodged in a spacious palace, with galleries, halls, and colonnades decorated with frescoes of playing children. In person he was small, quick, and lively — a born schoolmaster, whose whole time was spent in devotion to his pupils. We are told of the children of his patron, how Prince Gonzaga recited 200 verses of his own composition at the age of fourteen, and how Prince Cecilia wrote elegant Greek at the age of ten. Vittorino died in 1477. He seems to have reached the highest point of excellence as a practical schoolmaster of the Italian Renaissance.
Castiglione, on the other hand has left us in his Cortigiano the sketch of a cultivated nobleman in those most cultivated days. He shows by what pre- cepts and practice the golden youths of Verona and Venice were formed, who live for us in the plays of Shakespeare as models of knightly excellence.
For our instruction, it is better to have recourse to the pages of Erasmus. He has written the most minute account of his method of teaching. The i child is to be formed into a good Greek and Latin scholar and a pious man. He fully grasps the truth that improvement must be natural and gradual. Let- ERASMUS, 1467-1536 ters are to be taught play-
ing. The rules of grammar are ^to be few and
28 THE REFORMATION
short. Every means of arousing interest in the work is to be fully employed. Erasmus is no Ciceronian. Latin is to be taught so as to be of use — a living language adapted to modern wants. Children should learn an art — painting, sculpture, or architecture. Idleness is above all things to be avoided. The education of girls is as necessary and important as that of boys. Much depends upon home influence; obedience must be strict, but not too severe. We must take account of individual peculiarities, and not force children into cloisters against their will. We shall obtain the best result by following nature.
It is easy to see what a contrast this scheme pre- sented to the monkish training, — to the routine of useless technicalities enforced amidst the shouts of teachers and the lamentations of the taught.
Still this culture was but for the few. Luther brought the schoolmaster into the cottage, and laid the foundations of the system which is the chief honor and strength of modern Ger- I many, a system by which the child of the humblest peasant, by slow but certain gradations, receives the best education which the country
MARTIN LUTHER, 1483-1546 can afforc]. The precepts of
Luther found their way into the hearts of his countrymen in short, pithy sentences, like the say- ings of Poor Richard. The purification and widen-
ERASMUS, LUTHER, MELANCHTHON
29
PHILIPP MELANCHTHON,
1497-1560
ing of education went hand in hand with the puri- fication of religion, and these claims to affection are indissolubly united in the minds of his countrymen. Melanchthon, from his editions of school books
- • and his practical labors in
education, earned the title of Praeceptor Germanae. Aristotle had been de- throned from his pre-emin- ence in the schools, and Melanchthon attempted to supply his place. He ap- preciated the importance of Greek, the terror of the ob- scurantists, and is the au- thor of a Greek grammar. He wrote elementary books on each department of the trivium — grammar, dialect, and rhetoric. He made some way with the studies of the quadrivium, and wrote Inittd doctrines Physiccz, a primer of physi- cal science. He lectured at the university of Witten- berg, and for ten years, from 1519 to 1529, kept a schola privata in his own house.
Horace was his favorite classic. His pupils were taught to learn the whole of it by heart, ten lines at a time. The tender refined lines of his well-known portraits show clearly the character of the painful, accurate scholar, and contrast with the burly power- ful form of the genial Luther He died in 1560, racked with anxiety for the church which he had helped to found. If he did not carry Protestantism
30 JOHN STURM
into the heart of the peasant, he at least made it acceptable to the intellect of the man of letters.
We now come to the names of three theoretical and practical teachers who have exercised and are still exercising a profound effect over education. The so-called Latin school, the parent of the gymnasium and the lycee, had spread all over Europe, and was especially flourishing in Germany. The pro- grammes and time tables in use in these establish- ments have come down to us, and we possess notices of the lives and labors of many of the earliest teach- ers. It is not difficult to trace a picture of the edu- cation which the Reformation offered to the middle classes of Europe. Ample material exists in Ger- man histories of education. We must confine our- selves to those moments which were of vital influence in the development of the science.
One school stands pre-eminently before the rest, situated in that border city on the debatable land between France and Germany, which has known
how to combine and recon- cile the peculiarities of French and German cul- ture. Strasburg, besides a , school of theology which I unites the depth of Ger- many to the clearness and vivacity of France, educated the gilded youth of the i6th century under Sturm, as it JOHN STURM, 1507-1589 trained the statesmen and dipliomatists of the i8th under Koch. John Sturm
ROGER ASCHAM AND LADY JANE GREY
32 JOHN STURM
of Strasburg was the friend of Ascham, the author of the Scholemaster, and the tutor of Queen Elizabeth. It was Ascham who found Lady Jane Grey alone in her room at Bradgate bending her neck over the page of Plato when all the rest of her family were follow- ing the chase.
Sturm was the first great head-master, the pro- genitor of Busbys if not of Arnolds. He lived and worked till the age of \ eighty-two. He was a friend of all the most distinguished IJ men of his age, the chosen representative of the Prot- estant cause in Europe, the ambassador to foreign THOMAS ARNOLD, 1795-1842 powers. He was believed to be better informed than any man of his time of the complications of foreign politics. Rarely did an envoy pass from France to Germany without turning aside to profit by his experience.
But the chief energies of his life were devoted to teaching. He drew his scholars from the whole of Europe; Portugal, Poland, England sent their con- tingent to his halls. In 1578, his school numbered several thousand students; he supplied at once the place of the cloister and the castle. What he most insisted upon was the teaching of Latin, not the conversational lingua franca of Erasmus, but pure, elegant Ciceronian Latinity. He may be called the introducer of scholarship into the schools, a scholar- ship which as yet took little account of Greek. His
JOHN STURM 33
pupils would write elegant letters, deliver elegant Latin speeches, be familiar, if not with the thoughts, at least with the language of the ancients, would be scholars in order that they might be gentlemen.
Our space will not permit us to trace the whole course of his influence, but he is in all probability as much answerable as any one for the euphuistic refinement which overspread Europe in the i6th century, and which went far to ruin and corrupt its literatures. Nowhere perhaps had he more effect than in England. Our older public schools, on breaking with the ancient faith, looked to Sturm as their model of Protestant education. His name and example became familiar to us by the exertions of his friend Ascham. Westminster, under the long reign of Busby, received a form which was gener- ally accepted as the type of a gentleman's education. The Public School Commission of 1862 found that the lines laid down by the great citizen of Stras- burg, and copied by his admirers, had remained unchanged until within the memory of the present generation.
Wolfgang Ratke or Ratichius was born in Hoi- stein in 1571. He anticipated some of the best im- provements in the method of teaching which have been made in modern times. He was like many of those who have tried to improve existing methods in advance of his age, and he was rewarded for his labors at Augsburg, Weimar, and Kothen by perse- cution and imprisonment. ' Can we wonder that education has improved so slowly when so much pains has been taken to silence and extinguish those who have devoted themselves to its improvement?
34 WOLFGANG RATKE
His chief rules were as follows :
1. Begin everything with prayer.
2. Do everything in order, following the course of nature.
3. One thing at a time.
4. Often repeat the same thing.
5. Teach everything first in the mother tongue.
6. Proceed from the mother tongue to other lan- guages.
7. Teach without compulsion. Do not beat chil- dren to make them learn. Pupils must love their masters, not hate them. Nothing should be learnt by heart. Sufficient time should be given to play and recreation. Learn one thing before going on to another. Do not teach for two hours consecutively.
8. Uniformity in teaching, also in school-books, especially grammars, which may with advantage be made comparative.
9. Teach a thing first, and then the reason of it. Give no rules before you have given the examples. Teach no language out of the grammar, but out of authors.
10. Let everything be taught by induction and experiment.
Most of these precepts are accepted by all good teachers in the present day; all of them are full of wisdom. Unfortunately their author saw the faults of the teaching of his time more clearly than the means to remove them, and he was more successful in forming precepts than in carrying them out. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, he deserves an honorable place among the forerunners of a rational education.
JOHN AMOS COMENIUS 35
John Amos Comenius was the antithesis to Sturmr and a greater man than Ratke. Born a Moravian^ he passed a wandering life, among the troubles of the I Thirty Years' War, in pov- erty and obscurity. But his ideas were accepted by the most advanced thinkers of the age, notably in many respects by our own Mil- JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, 1592-1671 ton> and by Qxenstiern, the
chancellor of Sweden. His school books were spread throughout Europe. The J^anua Linguarum Reser- vata was translated into twelve European and several Asiatic languages. His works, especially the Dida- scalia magna, an encyclopaedia of the science of education, are constantly reprinted at the present day ; and the system which he sketched will be found to foreshadow the education of the future.
He was repelled and disgusted by the long delays and pedantries of the schools. His ardent mind conceived that if teachers would but follow nature instead of forcing it against its bent, take full advan- tage of the innate desire for activity and growth, all men might be able to learn all things. Languages should be taught as the mother tongue is taught, by conversations on ordinary topics; pictures, object lessons should be freely used; teaching should go hand in hand with, a cheerful elegant, and happy life. Comenius included in his course the teaching of the mother tongue, singing, economy, and politics, the history of the world, physical geography, and a knowledge of arts and handicrafts.
• f A N U A
LINGUA RUM
RESERATA:
S I VE,
Omnium Scientiarum Si Linguarum SEMINARIUM:
ID EST,
Cosipendiofa Latinam 8c Anglicam 3 aliafque
Linguas & Artiom euam fund Amenta addifcendi me-
tbodu ; una cum ]anu2C Lacinuatis Veiiihulo.
Antore Cl. Vitro J. A. C o M £ N I o.
The GATE of LANGUAGES- UNLOCKED:
Or3 a SEED-PLOT of all Arts and Tongues 5 containing 2 ready way to learn the Latine and Englifh Tongue.
Formerly tranflated by T H o. HORN: afterwards much correSed and amended by } o H. P\ o B o T H A M : now carefully reviewecf hv W. D. to which is prcmifcda PORTAL.
As alfo 5 there is now newly added the Foundation to the Janu&9 containing all or the chiefe Primitives of the Latine Tongue,drawn into Sentences, in an Alphabe- ts tirall order hyG.F. W
,
Printed by Edw.Grifjiny and Wil. Hunt, for ?hom& Slater, and art ro bs fold by the Company of Stationers, I 6 $ »•
The Portal to
fenfus,fcx profefti dies- Septem petitionesin Oratione
Dominica*
Qfto dies /unt feprimana. Ter tria funt norem* Deccm precepta Dei. Undecim Apoftoli, dempto
Judi.
Diiodecim fidci ardculi. Triginw dies funt mcnfis. Centum anni funt fcculum. Ssranas eft milk fraud-am ar-
tifex.
CAP. 4. Hereto* in fchol*
SCholafticus freqentat fcholam. Qu6 in artibus erudiatur.
Initiumeftiliteris- E fyllabis voces componuntur E diftionibus ferrno: Ex libro legimus tacit^. Aucrecitamus clare^ Involvjmus cum nnembrana Et ponimus in pulpito. Atramentum eft in atramenra rio,in quo tingimus calamum Scribimus co in charta, in
utraque pagina. Si perperam, delcmus. EC fignamus denuo rcdc 5 vel
in margins. Dpdor doccr • Difcipulus dlfcic non c^inia
fimul, fed per parces. Praeccptor prxcipic facicnda;
R fftor wgu Acidcmtam r
Four Ev&;geliftt9 five ftnfetf fix
" Seven petition* In
Thnce th> (tare nine.
Ten Commirndtmtmi ofGtct, £
f. , /i/ t i JL • crasa
ctpted. Supper
rmh* Artistes of the Faith, divide* Thin? d&jes *n a mneth. •4 hundred ye&s are &n. >* Set&n it, the fo>'g$r of at'
deceits.
GHAP. 4.
Of things in a fchool*
A Scholty frcquentttb the ** fchoote.
That he m*\kt infbu&dm tbt Arts.
wds are compefed of bUMet.
we regdflentfy out of A 0.' recite it <d*ud. we wrap it ftp i
n% is in the i»^&r«, in wh.cb
we wilt with It i& paper, on ei- ther page.
Andtbtn tovlt it in tht linear in
.
»# teacher is tcketb, Afc'mUr kirwih not dtogtttw,
but by pArti. ThtMtfttr tommeatti tbivgt t*
The G&witsr r*!eft*tbt Acde- E Th
38 JOHN AMOS COMENIUS
But the principle on which he most insisted, which forms the special point of his teaching, and in which he is followed by Milton, is that the teaching of words and things must go together hand in hand. When we consider how much time is spent over new languages, what waste of energy is lavished on mere preparation, how it takes so long to lay a foundation that there is no time to rear a building upon it, we must conclude that it is in theacceptanceand develop- ment of this principle that the improvement of edu- cation will in the future consist. Any one who attempts to inculcate this great reform will find that its first principles are contained in the writings of Comenius.
But this is not the whole of his claim upon our gratitude. He was one of the first advocates of the teaching of science in schools. His kindness, gentle- ness, and sympathy make him the forerunner of Pestalozzi. His general principles of education would not sound strange in the treatise of Herbert Spencer.
The Protestant schools were now the best in Europe, and the monkish institutions were left to de- cay. Catholics would have remained behind in the race if it had not been for the Jesuits. Ignatius Loyola gave this direction to the order which he founded, and the programme of studies, which dates from the end of IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA, 1491-1556 the sixteenth century, is in
THE JESUITS 39
use, with certain modifications, in English Jesuit schools at the present day.x In 1550 the first Jesuit school was opened in Germany; in 1700 the order possessed 612 colleges, 157 normal schools, 59 novi- ciates, 340 residences, 200 missions, 29 professed homes, and 24 universities. The college of Clermont had 3000 students in 1695.
Every Jesuit college was divided into two parts, the one for higher, the other for lower education, — the studio, superiora and the studia inferiora. The studia inferiora, answering to the modern gymnasium, was divided into five classes. The first three were classes of grammar (rudiments), grammar (acci- dence), and syntax ; the last two humanity and rhetoric.
The motto of the schools was lege, scribe, loquere, — you must learn not only to read and write a dead language, but to talk. Purism was even more exaggerated that by Sturm. No word might be used which did not rest upon a special authority. The composition of Latin verses was strongly encouraged, and the performance of Latin plays. Greek • w*as studied to some extent; mathematics, geography, music, and the mother tongues were neglected.
The studia superiora began with a philosophical course of two or three years. In the first year logic was taught, in the second the books of Aristotle, dc <r^/<?, the first book de generatione, and the Meteorologica. In the third year the second book de generatwne, the books de anima, and the Metaphysics. After the com- pletion of the philosophical course the pupil studied theology for four years.
THE JESUITS
The Jesuits used to the full the great engine of emulation. Their classes were divided into two parts, Romans and Carthaginians; swords, shields, and lances hung on the walls, and were carried off in triumph as either party claimed the victory by a fortunate answer.
It would be unfair to deny the merits of the educa- tion of the Jesuits. Bacon speaks of them in more than one passage as the revivers of this most important art. Quum talis sis utinam noster \ esses. Descartes approved of their system ; Chateau- briand regarded their sup- pression as a calamity to civilization and enlighten- ment. They were probably the first to bring the teacher into close connection with the taught. According to their ideal the teacher was neither inclosed in a clois- ter,secluded from hispupils, nor did he keep order by stamping, raving, and flog- ging. He was encouraged to apply his mind and soul to the mind and soul of his pupil ; to study the nature, the disposition, the par- ents of his scholars; to follow nature as far as pos- sible, or rather to lie in wait for it and discover its weak points, and where it could be most easily
FRANCIS BACON, 1561 1626
RENE DESCARTES, 1596-1650
THEIR FAULTS 4!
attacked. Doubtless the Jesuits have shown a love, devotion, and self-sacrifice in education, which is worthy of the highest praise; no teacher who would compete with them can dare do less.
On the other hand, they are open to grave accusa- tion. Their watchful care degenerated into surveil- lance, which lay-schools have borrowed from them ; their study of nature has led them to confession and direction. /They have tracked out the soul to its recesses, that they might slay it there, and generate another in its place ; they educated each mind accord- ing to its powers, that it might be a more subservient tool to their own purposes. s They taught the ac- complishments which the world loves, but their chief object was to amuse the mind and stifle inquiry; they engaged Latin verses, because they were a con- venient plaything on which powers might be exer- cised which could have been better employed in understanding and discussing higher subjects f they were the patrons of school plays, of public prizes, declamations, examinations, and other exhibitions, in which the parents were more considered than the boys; they regarded the claims of education, not as a desire to be encouraged, but as a demand to be played with and propitiated; they gave the best education of their time in order to acquire confidence, but they became the chief obstacle to the improve- ment, of education; they did not care for enlighten- ment, but only for the influence which they could derive from a supposed regard for enlightenment.
What may have been the service of Jesuits in past times, we have little to hope for them in the improve- ment of education at present. Governments have,
42 MONTAIGNE
on the whole, acted wisely by checking and sup- pressing their colleges. The ratio studiorum is an- tiquated and difficult to reform. In 1831 it was brought more into accordance with modern ideas by Roothaan, the general of the order. Beckx, his suc- cessor, has, if anything, pursued a policy of retro- gression. The Italian Government, in taking pos- session of Rome, found that the pupils of the Col- legio Romano were far below the level of modern requirements.
It may be imagined that, by this organization both Catholic and Protestant were apt to degenerate into pedantry, both in name and purpose. The school- master had a great deal too much the best of it. The Latin school was tabulated and organized until every half hour of a boy's time was occupied; the Jesuit school took possession of the pupil body and soul. It was, therefore, to be expected that a stand should be made for common sense in the direction of prac- tice rather than theory, of wisdom instead of learning. Montaigne has left us the most delightful utter- ances about education. He says that the faults of the education of his day con- sist in overestimating the intellect and rejecting mor- ality, in exaggerating mem- ory and depreciating use- ful knowledge. He recom- mends a tutor who should draw out the pupil's own MICHEL EQUEM DE MON- power and originality, to TAIGNE, 1533-1592 teach how to live well and
to die well, to enforce a lesson by practice, to put
LOCKE 43
the mother tongue before foreign tongues, to teach all manly exercises, to educate the perfect man. Away with force and compulsion, with severity and the rod.
John Locke, more than a hundred years afterwards, made a more powerful and systematic attack upon use- less knowledge. His theory of the origin of ideas led him to assign great import- ance to education, while his knowledge of the operations of the human mind lends a special value to his advice. His treatise has received in JOHN LOCKE, 1632-1704 England more attention than it deserves, partly because we have so few books written upon the subject on which he treats Part of his advice is useless at the present day ; part it would be well to follow, or at any rate to consider seriously, especially his condemnation of repetition by heart as a means of strengthening the memory, and of Latin verses and themes.
He sets before himself the production of the man, a sound mind in a sound body. His knowledge of medicine gives great value to his advice on the earl- iest education, although he probably exaggerates the benefits of enforced hardships. He recommends home education without harshness or severity of discipline. Emulation is to be the chief spring of action; knowledge is far less valuable than a well- trained mind. He prizes that knowledge most which
44 MILTON
fits a man for the duties of the world, speaking lan- guages, accounts, history, law, logic, rhetoric, natural philosophy. He inculcates the importance of draw- ing, dancing, riding, fencing, and trades.
The part of his advice which made the most im- pression upon his contemporaries was the teaching of reading and arithmetic by well-considered games, the discouragement of an undue compulsion and punishment, and the teaching of language without the drudgery of grammar. In these respects he has undoubtedly anticipated modern discoveries. He is a strong advocate for home education under a private tutor, and his bitterness against public schools is as vehement as that of Cowper.
Far more important in the literature of this sub- ject than the treatise of Locke is the Tractate of Education* by Milton, "the few observations," as he tells us, "which flowered off, and are, as it were, the burnishings of many studi- ous and contemplative years spent in search for civil and religious knowl- JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674 edge." This essay is ad- dressed to Samuel Hartlib, a great friend of Come- nius, and probably refers to a project of establishing a university in London.
" I will point you out," Milton says, " the right path of a virtuous and noble education, — laborious, indeed,
* School Room Classics, vi. A Small Tractate of Education, by John Milton, 16:26, 15 cts. Syracuse, N. Y., C. W. Bardeen.
MILTON 45
at first ascent^ but else so smooth and green and full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus is not more charming." This is to be done between twelve and one-and-twenty, in an academy containing about a hundred and thirty scholars, which shall be at once school and univer- sity,— not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship except it be some peculiar college of law and physics, where they mean to be practitioners.
The important truth enunciated is quite in the spirit of Comenius that the learning of things and words is to go hand in hand. The curriculum is very large. Latin, Greek, arithmetic, geometry, agriculture, geography, physiology, physics, trigo- nometry, fortification, architecture, engineering, navigation, anatomy, medicine, poetry, Italian, law, both Roman and English, Hebrew, with Chaldee and Syriac, history, oratory, poetics.
But the scholars are not to be book-worms. They are to be trained for war, both on foot and on horse- back, to be practised u in all the locks and gripes of wrestling," they are to "recreate and compose their travailed spirits with the divine harmonies of music heard or learnt." " In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I should not then be a persuader to them of studying much then, after two or three years that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in companies with prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the land."
46 PORT ROYAL
The whole treatise is full of wisdom, and deserves to be studied again and again. Visionary as it may appear to some at first sight, if translated into the language of our own day, it will be found to abound with sound, practical advice. " Only," Milton says in conclusion, " I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot who counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the essay than it now seems at a distance, and much more illustrious if God have so decided and this age have spirit and capacity enough to apprehend."
Almost while Milton was writing this treatise, he might have seen an attempt to realize something of his ideal in Port Royal. What a charm does this name awaken ! Yet how few of us have made a pil- grimage to that secluded vallqy ! Here we find for the first time in the modern world the highest gifts of the greatest men of a country applied to the busi- ness of education. Arnauld, Lancelot, Nicole did not commence by being educational philosophers. They began with a small school, and developed their method as they proceeded. Their success has seldom been surpassed.
But a more lasting memorial than their pupils are the books which they sent out, which bear the name of their cloister. The Port Royal Logic, General Grammar, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish Gram- mars, the Garden of Greek Roots which taught Greek to Gibbon, the Port Royal Geometry, and their trans- lations of the classics held the first place among school books for more than a century.
FRANCKE
47
The success of the Jansenists was too much for the jealousy of the Jesuits. Neither piety, nor wit, nor virtue could save them. A light was quenched which would have given an entirely different direction to the education of France and of Europe. No one can visit without emotion that retired nook which lies hidden among the forests of Versailles, where the old brick dove-cot, the pillars of the church, the trees of the desert alone remain to speak to us of Pascal, Racine, and the Mere Angelique.
The principles of Port Royal found some sup- porters in a later time, in the better days of French education before monarch- ism and militarism had crushed the life out of the nation. Rollin is never mentioned without the epi- thet bori) a testimony to his wisdom, virtue and sim- plicity. Fenelon may be reckoned as belonging to the same school, but he was more fitted to mix and grap- ple with mankind.
No history of education , would be complete without the name of August Her- mann Francke, the founder of the school of Pietists, and of a number of institu- tions which now form al- AFP. FENELON, 1651-1715 most a suburb in the town
CHARLES ROLLIN, 1661-1741
4° THE PIETISTS
of Halle to which his labors were devoted. The
first scenes of his activity were Leipzig and Dresden ; but in 1692, at the age of 29, he was made pastor of Glaucha, near Halle, and professor in the newly es- tablished university.
Three years later he com- menced his poor school
AUGUST HERMANN FRANCKE, with a Capital of seven
1663-1727 guelders which he found in
the poor box of his house. At his death in 1727 he left behind him the following institutions: — a paeda- gogium, or training college, with eighty-two scholars and seventy teachers receiving education, and attend- ants ; the Latin school of the orphan asylum, with three inspectors, thirty-two teachers, four hundred scholars, and ten servants ; the German town schools, with four inspectors, ninety-eight teachers, eight female teachers, and one thousand seven hundred and twenty-five boys and girls. The establishment for orphan children contained one hundred boys, thirty-four girls, and ten attendants. A cheap public dining-table was attended by two hundred and fifty- five students and three hundred and sixty poor scholars, and besides this there was an apothecary's and a bookseller's shop.
Francke's principles of education were strictly religious. Hebrew was included in his curriculum, but the heathen classics were treated with slight re- spect. The Homilies of Macarius were read in the
ROUSSEAU 49
place of Thucydides. As might be expected, the rules laid down for discipline and moral training breathed a spirit of deep affection and sympathy.
Francke's great merit, however, is to have left us a model of institutions by which children of all ranks may receive an education to fit them for any position in life. The Franckesche Stiftungen are still, next to the university, the centre of the intel- lectual life of Halle, and the different schools which they contain give instruction to 3,500 children.
We now come to the book which has had more in- fluence than any other on the education of later times. The Emile of Rousseau was published in
1762. It produced an as- tounding effect throughout Europe. Those were days when the whole cultivated world vibrated to any touch of new philosophy. French had superseded Latin as the general medi- um of thought. French
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, learning stood in the same 1712-1778 relation to the rest of Eu-
rope as German learning does now : and any dis- covery of D'Alembert, Rousseau, or Maupertuis travelled with inconceivable speed from Versailles to Schonbrunn, from the Spree to the Neva. Kant in his distant home of Konigsberg broke for one day through his habits, more regular than the town clock, and staid at home to study the new revelation.
50 ROUSSEAU
The burthen of Rousseau's message was nature, such a nature as never did and never will exist, but still a name for an ideal worthy of our struggles. He revolted against the false civilization which he saw around him ; he was penetrated with sorrow at the shams of government and society, at the misery of the poor existing side by side with the heartless- ness of the rich. The child should be the pupil of nature.
He lays great stress on the earliest education. The first year of life is in every respect the most impor- tant. Nature must be closely followed. The child's tears are petitions which should be granted. The naughtiness of children comes from weakness ; make the child strong and he will be good. Children's destructiveness is a form of activity. Do not be too anxious to make children talk ; be satisfied with a small vocabulary. Lay aside all padded caps and baby jumpers. Let children learn to walk by learn- ing that it hurts them to fall. Do not insist so much on the duty of obedience as on the necessity of sub- mission to natural laws. Do not argue too much with children ; educate the heart to wish for right actions ; before all things study nature. The chief moral principle is do no one harm.
Emile is to be taught by the real things of life, by observation and experience. At twelve years old he is scarcely to know what a book is; to be able to read and write at fifteen is quite enough. We must first make him a man, and that chiefly by athletic exercises. Educate his sight to measure, count, and
THE EMILE 51
weight accurately ; teach him to draw; tune his ear to time and harmony: give him simple food, but let him eat as much as he likes. 'Thus at twelve years old Emile is a real child of nature. His carriage and bearing are fair and confident, his nature open and candid, his speech simple and to the point ; his ideas are few but clear; he knows nothing by learning, much by experience. He has read deeply in the book of nature. His mind is not on his tongue but in his head. He speaks only one language, but knows what he is saying, and can do what he cannot describe. Routine and custom are unknown to him ; authority and example affect him not : he does what he thinks right. He understands nothing of duty and obedience, but he will do what you ask him, and will expect a similar service of you in return. His strength and body are fully developed ; he is first- rate at running, jumping, and judging distances. Should he die at this age he wrill so far have lived his life.
From twelve to fifteen Emile's practical education is to continue. He is still to avoid books which teach not learning itself but to appear learned. He is to be taught and to practise some handicraft. Half the value of education is to waste time wisely, to tide over dangerous years with safety, until the character is better able to stand temptation.
At fifteen a new epoch commences. The passions are awakened; the care of the teacher should now redouble; he should never leave the helm. Emile having gradually acquired the love of himself and of
52 ROUSSEAU
those immediately about him, will begin to love his kind. Now is the time to teach him history, and the machinery of society, the world as it is and as it might be. Still an encumbrance of useless and bur- densome knowledge is to be avoided. Between this age and manhood Emile learns all that it is necessary for him to know.
It is, perhaps, strange that a book in many respects so wild and fantastic should have produced so great a practical effect. In pursuance of its precepts, children went about naked, were not allowed to read, and when they grew up wore the simplest clothes, and cared for little learning except the study of nature and Plutarch.
The catastrophe of the French Revolution has made the importance of Emile less apparent to us. Much of the heroism of that time is doubtless due to the exaltation produced by the sweeping away of abuses, and the approach of a brighter age. But we must not forget that the first generation of Emile was just thirty years old in 1792; that many of the Girondins, the Marseillais, the soldiers-and generals of Carnot and Napoleon had been bred in that hardy school. There is no more interesting chapter in the history of education than the tracing back of epochs of special activity to the obscure source from which they arose. Thus the Whigs of the Reform Bill sprang from the wits of Edinburgh, the heroes of the Rebellion from the divines who translated the Bible, the martyrs of the Revolution from the philosophers of the Encyclopaedia.
BASEDOW S3
The teaching of Rousseau found its practical expression in the philan- thropin of Dessau, a school founded by Basedow, the friend of Goethe and La- | vater, one of the two prophets between whom the world-child sat bodkin in that memorable post- chaise journey of which
JOHANN BERNARD BASEDOW, Goethe has left us an ac- 1723-1790 count. The principles of
the teaching given in this establishment were very much those of Comenius, the combination of words and things.
An amusing account of the instruction given in this school, which at this time consisted of only thirteen pupils, has come down to us, a translation of which is given in the excellent work of Mr. Quick on educational reformers*. The little ones have gone through the oddest performances. They play at " word of command ". Eight or ten stand in line like soldiers, and Herr Wolke is officer. He gives the word in Latin, and they must do whatever he says. For instance when he says " Claudite ocutos ", they all shut their eyes; when he says " Circum- spicite ", they look about them ; " Imitamini sutorem ", they draw their waxed thread like cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand different commands in the drollest fashion.
Another game, "the hiding game", may also be described. Some one writes a name and hides it
Pp. 193-197 of the Reading Circle edition, Syracuse, X. V.
54 BASEDOW S PHILANTHROPIN
from the children, the name of some part of the body, or of a plant or animal, or metal, and the children guess what it is. Whoever guesses right gets an apple or a piece of cake; one of the visitors wrote " intestina ", and told the children it was part of the body. Then the guessing began ; one guessed caput, another nasus, another os, another manus, pcs, digiti, pcctus, and so forth for a long time, but one of them hits it at last.
Next Herr Wolke wrote the name of a beast or quadruped, then came the guesses, /<?<?, ursus, camelus, elephas, and so on, till one guessed right it was mus. Then a town was written, and they guessed Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, till a child won with St. Petersburg.
They had another game which was this. Herr Wolke gave the command in Latin, and they imitated the noises of different animals, and made the visitors laugh till they were tired. They roared like lions, crowed like cocks, mewed like cats, just as they were bid.
Yet Kant found a great deal to praise in this school, and spoke of its influence as one of the best hopes of the future, and as " the only school where the teachers had liberty to act according to their own methods and schemes, and where they were in free communication both among themselves and IMMANUEL KANT, 1724-1804 with all] , learned men throughout Germany."
PESTALOZZI 55
A more successful laborer in the same school was Salzmann, who bought the property of Schnepfenthal, near Gotha> in 1784, and established a school there, which still exists as a flourishing institution. He gave full scope to the doctrines of the philanthropists ; the limits of learning were enlarged; study became a pleasure instead of a pain ; scope was given for healthy exercise ; the school became light, airy, and cheerful. A charge of superficiality and weakness was brought against this method of instruction ; but the gratitude which our generation of teachers owes to the unbounded love and faith of these devoted men cannot be denied or refused.
The end of the i8th century saw a great develop- ment given to classical studies. The names of Cel- larius, Gesner, Ernesti, and Heyne are perhaps more celebrated as scholars than as schoolmasters. To them we owe the- great importance attached to the study of the classics, both on the Continent^and in England. They brought into the schools the phil- ology which F. A. Wolfe had organized for the uni- versities.
Pestalozzi, on the other hand, was completely and entirely devoted to education. His greatest merit is that he set an example of absolute self-abnegation ; that he lived with his pupils, played, starved, and suffered with them ; and clung to their minds and hearts with an affectionate sympathy which revealed to him every minute difference of character and dis- position.
Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. His father
JOHANN HEINKICH PESTALOZZI, 1748-188?
PESTALOZZI
57
RMenplatz, Zurich. The middle house was Pestalozzi's birthplace.
died when he was young, and he was brought up by his mother. His earliest years were spent in schemes for improving the condition of the people. The death of his friend Bluntschli turned him from politi- cal schemes, and induced him to devote himself to education. He married at 23, and bought a piece of waste land in Aargau, where he attempted the culti- vation of madder. Pestalozzi knew nothing of bus- iness, and the plan failed. Before this he had opened his farm-house as a school; but in 1780 he had to give this up also.
His. first book published at this time was The Even- ing Hours of a Hermit, a series of aphorisms and reflections. This was followed by his masterpiece, Leonard and Gertrude, an account of the gradual
5o PESTALOZZI S SCHOOL AT STANZ
reformation, first of a household, and then of a whole village, by the efforts of a good arid devoted woman. It was read with avidity in Germany, and the name of Pestalozzi was rescued from obscurity. His attempts to follow up his first literary success were failures.
The French invasion of Switzerland in 1798 brought into relief his truly heroic character. A number of children were left in Canton Unterwalden on the shores of the Lake of Luzerne without parents, home,
STANZ
food, or shelter. Pestalozzi collected a number of them into a deserted convent, and spent his energies in reclaiming them.
"I was," he says, "from morning till evening, almost alone in their midst. Everything which was
60 PESTALOZZl's SCHOOL AT STANZ
done for their body or soul proceeded from my hand. Every assistance, every help in time of need, every teaching which they received came immediatly from me. My hand lay in their hand, my eye rested on their eye, my tears flowed with theirs, and my laughter accompanied theirs. They were out of the world, they were out of Stanz ; they were with me, and I was with them. Their soup was mine; their drink was mine. I had nothing; I had no house- keeper, no friend, no servants around me; I had them alone. Were they well I stood in their midst ; were they ill, I was at their side. I slept in the middle of them. I was the last who went to bed at night, the first who rose in the morning. Even in bed I prayed and taught with them until they were asleep, — they wished it to be so." Thus he passed the winter; but in June, 1799, the building was required by the French for a hospital, and the chil- dren were dispersed.
We have dwelt especially on this episode of Pesta- lozzi's life, because in this devotion lay his strength. In 1801 he gave an exposition of his ideas on educa- tion in the book How Gertrude teaches her Children*. His method is to proceed from the easier to the more difficult — to begin with observation, to pass from observation to consciousness, from consciousness to speech. Then come measuring, drawing, writing, numbers, and so reckoning.
•How Gertrude teaches her Children An attempt to help mothers to teach their own children, and an account of the method. A report to the Society of the Friends of Education, Burgdnrf, by Johann Heinrich Pesta- lozzi. Translated by Lucy E. Holland and Frances E. Turner, and edited, with introduction and notes, by Ebenezer Cooke. 1:2:308, $1.50. Syracuse, N. Y., C. W. Bardeen. 1894.
AT BURGDORF AND YVERDUN 6*
In 1799 he had been enabled to establish a school
BURGDORF
at Burgdorf, where he remained till 1804. In 1802, he went as deputy to Paris, and did his best to inter- est Napoleon in a scheme of national education ; but the great conqueror said that he could not trouble himself about the alphabet.
In 1805 hfi removed to Yverdun on the Lake of Neufchatel, and for twenty years worked steadily at his task. He was visited by all who took interest in education — Talleyrand, Capo d'Istria, and Madame de Stael. He was praised by Wilhelm von Hum- boldt and by Fichte. His pupils included Ramsauer, Delbruck, Blochmann, Carl Ritter, Froebel, and Zeller.
62
PESTALOZZl's SCHOOL AT YVERDUN
V VERDUN
About 1815 dissensensions broke out among the teachers of the school, and Pestalozzi's last ten years were chequered by weari- ness and sorrow. In 1825 he retired to Neuhof, the home of his youth; and after writing the adventures of his life, and his last work, the Swan's Song, he died in 1827.
As he said himself, the real work of his life did not lie in Burgdorf or in Yverdun, the productsVather
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 1762-1814
'O4 PESTALOZZI S WORK
of his weakness than of his strength. It lay in the principles of education which he practised, the devel- opment of his observation, the training of the whole man, the sympathetic application of the teacher to the taught, of which he left an example in his six months' labors at Stanz. He showed what truth there was in the principles of Comenius and Rous- seau, in the union of training with information, and the submissive following of nature; he has had the
The Schoolliouse at Birr, with Pestalozzi's Memorial
deepest effect on all branches of education since his time, and his influence is far from being ex- hausted. \
Statue In Pestalozzi Square, Yverdun. Inscription : - To Pesta-
lozzi, 1746-1827. This monument was erected by
popular subscription in 1890."
66
GERMAN WRITERS
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER,
1788-1860
The Emile of Rousseau was the point of departure for an awakened interest in educational theories which has continued unto the present day. Few thinkers of eminence during the last hundred years have failed to offer their contri- butions more or less direct- ly on this subject. Poets like Richter, Herder and Goethe, philosophers such as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schleiermacher and Schopen- hauer, psychologists such as Herbart and Beneke, have left directions for our guidance.
Indeed, during this time the science of education, or paedagogics, as the Ger- mans call it, may have been said to have come into ex- istence. It has attracted but little attention in Eng- land ;s but it is an impor- tant subject of study at all German universities, and we may hope that the ex-
JOHANN PEIBDR.CH HERBART amPle SiVCn ^ the CStab-
1776-1841 lishment of chairs of educa-
tion in the Scotch universities may soon be followed by the other great centres of instruction in Great Britain.
JEAN PAUL, AND GOETHE
67
JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER, 1763-1825
Jean Paul called his book Levana after the Roman goddess to whom the father dedicated his new-born child, in token that he in- tended to rear it to man- hood. He lays great stress on the preservation of indi- viduality of character, a merit which he possessed himself in so high a degree. The second part of Wil- helm Meister is in the main a treatise upon education. The essays of Carlyle have made us familiar with the mysteries of the paedagogic province, the solemn gestures of the three reverences, the long cloisters which contain the history of God's dealings with the human race. The most characteristic passage is that which de- scribes the father's return to the country of educa- tion after a year's absence. As he is riding aloner wondering in what guise he will meet his son, a multitude of horses rush by at full gallop. "The BI^X monstrous hurly-burly
whirls past the wanderer;
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE a ^T ^OV among tne keep-
1749-1832 ers looks at him in sur-
prise, pulls in, leaps down, and embraces his father." He then learns that an agricultural life had not suited his son, that the superiors had discovered that he
68
JACOTOT
was fond of animals, and had set him to that occupa- tion for which nature had destined him.
The system of Jacotot has aroused great interest in this country. Its author was born at Dijon in 1770. In 1815 he retired to Lou- vain and became professor there, and director of the Belgian military school. He died in 1840. H i s method of teaching is based on three principles :
i. All men have an equal JOSEPH JACOTOT, 1770-1840 intelligence.
2. Every man has received from God the faculty of being able to instruct himself.
3. Every thing is in every thing.
The first of these principles is certainly wrong, although Jacotot tried to explain it by asserting that, although men had the same intelligence, they differed widely in the will to make use of it. Still it is im- portant to assert that nearly all men are capable of receiving some intellectual education, provided the studies to which they are directed are wide enough to engage their faculties, and the means taken to interest them are sufficiently ingenious. The second principle lays down that it is more necessary to stim- ulate the pupil to learn for himself, than to teach him didactically.
The third principle explains the process which Jacotot adopted. To one learning a language for the first time he would give a short passage of a few lines, and encourage the pupil to study first the words, then the letters, then the grammar, then the
THE MONITORIAL^SYSTEM 69
full meaning of the expressions, until by iteration and accretion a single paragraph took the place of an entire literature. Much^may be effected by this method in the hands of a skilful teacher, but a char- latan might make it an excuse for ignorance and neglect.
Among those who have^improved the methods of
teaching, we must mention Bell and Lancaster, the joint discoverers of the method of mutual instruc- tion, which, if it has not effected everything which its founders expected of it, has produced the system of pupil-teachers which is common in our schools. ANDREW BELL, 1753-1832 Froebel also deserves an honorable place as the founder of the Kindergarten, a
means of teaching young lSi|. children by playing and
Bi- ML amusement. His plans, H^ which have a far wider sig- nificance than this limited development of them, are likely to be fruitful of re- sults to future workers.
The last English writers on education are Mr. Her- JOSEPH LANCASTER, ms-isss bert Spencer and Mr. Alex-
ander Bain, the study of whose writings will land us in those regions of pedagogics which have been most recently explored.
3 HERBERT SPENCER
We need not follow Mr. Spencer into his defence of science as the worthiest object of study, or in his rules for moral and physi- cal training, except to say they are sound and practi- cal. In writing of intel- lectual education, he insists that we shall attain the best results by closely studying the development of the
HERBERT SPENCER, 1820- mind> and availing our.
selves of the whole amount of force which nature puts at our disposal. The mind of every being is naturally active and vigorous, indeed it is never at rest. But for its healthy growth it must have some- thing to work upon, and, therefore, the teacher must watch its movements with the most sympathetic care, in order to supply exactly that food which it requires at any particular time. In this way a much larger cycle of attainments can be compassed than by the adoption of any programme or curriculum, however carefully drawn up.
It is no good to teach what is not remembered; the strength of memory depends on attention, and attention depends upon interest. To teach without interest is to work like Sisyphus and the Danaides. Arouse interest if you can, rather by high means than by low means. But it is a saving of power to make use of interest which you have already exist- ing, and which, unless dried up or distorted by inju- dicious violence, will naturally lead the mind into all the knowledge which it is capable of receiving.
ALEXANDER BAIN Jl
Therefore, never from the first force a child's atten- tion ; leave off a study the moment it becomes weari- some, never let a child do what it does not like, only take care that when its liking is in activity a choice of good as well as evil shall be given to it.
Mr. Bain's writings on education, which are con- tained in some articles in the Fortnightly Review, and in two articles in Afind(Nos. v. and vii.) are extremely valuable. Perhaps the rqpst interesting part of them consists in his showing how what may be called the 4€ correlation of forces in man " helps us to a right education. From this we learn that emotion may be transformed into intellect, that sensation may exhaust the brain as much as thought, and we may infer that the chief duty of the schoolmaster is to stimulate the powers of each brain under his charge to the fullest activity, and to apportion them in that ratio which will best conduce to the most complete and harmon- ious development of the individual.
It seems to follow from this sketch of the history of education that, in spite of the great advances which have been made of late years, the science of educa- tion is still far in advance of the art. Schoolmasters are still spending their best energies in teaching sub- jects which have been universally condemned by educational reformers for the last two hundred years. The education of every public school is a farrago of rules, principles, and customs derived from every age of teaching, from the most modern to the most re- mote. It is plain that the science and art of teach- ing will never be established on a firm basis until it is organized on the model of the sister art of medi- cine. We must pursue the patient methods of induction by which other sciences have reached the
72 HISTORIES OF EDUCATION
stature of maturity ; we must discover some means of registering and tabulating results ; we must invent a phraseology and nomenclature which will enable results to be accurately recorded ; we must place education in its proper position among the sciences of observation. A philosopher who should succeed in doing this would be venerated by future ages as the creator of the art of teaching.
It only remains now to give some account of the very large literature of the*subject.
The history of education was not investigated till the beginning of the present century, and since then little original research has been made' except by Germans. Whilst acknowledging our great obliga- tions to the German historians, we cannot but regret that all the investigations have belonged to the same nation. For instance, one of the best treatises on education written in the i6th century is Mulcaster's Positions, which has never been reprinted, and is now a literary curiosity.
Mangelsdorf and Ruhkopf attempted histories of education at the end of the last century, but the first work of note was F. H. Ch. Schwarz's Geschichtc d. Er- ziehung (1813). A. H. Nie- meyer, a very influential writer, was one of the first to insist on the importance of making use of all that has been handed down to AUGUST HERMANN NiEMEYER, us, and with this practical 1754-1828 object in view he has given
us an Ueberblickderallgemeinen Geschichte der Er ziehung.
VON RAUMER AND SCHMIDT
Other writers followed ; but from the time of its appearance till within the last few years, by far the most readable and the most read work on the history of education was that of Karl von Raumer. Raumer, how- ever, is too chatty and too religious to pass for " wis- senschaftlich ", and the stand- '^^r< ard history is now that of
KARL GEORG VON RAUMER
1783-1865 Karl Schmidt. The Roman
Catholics have not been content to adopt the works of Protestants, but have histories of their own. These are the very pleasing sketches of L. Kellner and the somewhat larger history by Stoeckl.
When we come to writers who have produced sketches or shorter histories, we find the list in Ger- many a very long one. Among the best books of this kind are Fried. Dittes's Geschichte and Drose's Padagogischc Characterbildcr. An account of this lit- erature will be found in J. Chr. G. Schurmann's paper among the Padagogische Studien, edited by Dr. Reiss.
For biographies the paedagogic cyclopaedias may be consulted, of which the first is the Encyclopadie dcs gcsammten Erzichungswescns of K. A. Schmid, a great work in ii or 12 vols. not yet completed, although the second edition of the early vols. is already an- nounced. The Roman Catholics have also begun a
74 HISTORIES OF EDUCATION
large encyclopaedia edited by Rolfus and Pfister. No similar work has been published in France, but a Cyclopedia of Education in one volume has lately been issued in New York (Steiger, — the editors are Kiddle and Schem), and in this there are articles by English as well as American writers*. In French the Esquisse d'un systems complet cT Education, by Th. Fritz {Strasburg, 1841), has a sketch of the history, which as a sketch is worth notice. Jules Paroz has written a useful little Histoire which would have been more valuable if it had been longer.
In English, though we have no investigators of the history of education, we have a fairly large literature on the subject, but it belongs almost exclusively to the United States. The great work of Henry Bar- nard, the American Journal of Education, in 25 vols., has valuable papers on almost every part of our subject, many of them translated from the German, but there are also original papers on our old English educational writers and extracts from their works. This is by far HENRY BARNARD, i8ii- the most valuable work in our language on the history of education.
* A more recent publication is *' Sonnenschein's Cyclopaedia of Educa- tion : a handbook on all subjects connected with education (its history, theory, and practice) comprising articles by eminent educational specialists. The whole arranged and edited by Alfred Ewen Fletcher.'1 8:560, $3.75. •Syracuse, N. Y., C. W. Bardeen, 1889.
BARNARD, QUICK, PAYNE 75
The small volumes published in America with the title of "History of Educa- tion " do not deserve notice. In England may be men- tioned the article on educa- tion by Mr. James Mill, pub- lished in the early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and R. H. Quick's most ex- cellent Essays on Educational QUICK, Reformers, published in 1831-1891 1868*. Since then Mr.
Leitch of Glasgow has issued a volume called Prac- tical Educationists, which deals with English and Scotch reformers, as well as with Comenius and Pestalozzi. Now that professorships of education have been established we may hope for some original research. The first professor appointed was the late Joseph Payne, a name well-known to those among us who have studied the theory of education. The professorship was started by the College of Precep- tors. At Edinburgh and at St. Andrews professors have since been elected by the Bell Trustees.
Valuable reports as to the state of education in the various countries that possess a national system were presented to the English schools Inquiry Com- mission in 1867 and 1868, by inspectors specially
"Essays on Educational Reformers by Robert Hebert Quick. Reading Circle Edition, with Notes and Illustrations. 16:430, $1.00. Syracuse, N. Y., 1896. C. W. Bardeen.
76
REPORTS ON EDUCATION
appointed to investigate the subject. The reports
on the Common School System of the United States and Canada, by the Rev. James Fraser, on the Burgh Schools in Scotland by D. R. Fearon, and on Second- ary Education in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, by Matthew Arnold, are included in Parliament- MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1822-1895 ary Papers [3857], 1867,
and [3966 v.], 1868. (o. B.)
NOTES AND REFERENCES
GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Schmidt and Raumer are the great authorities on the history of education. Copious translations from Raumer are contained in Barnard's American Jour- nal of Education, and the portions relating to Ger- man education are collected in Barnard's German Teachers and Educators.
Paroz's Histoire Universelle is elegantly written, and contains, within a moderate compass, an admir- able summary of educational history.
For the study of special topics, Mr. Quick's Edu- cational Reformer -j cannot be too highly recommended. Mr. Leitch writes with much less critical discern- ment, and some of his subjects are of minor impor- tance, but his work may be read with great profit.
As a critical history of educational doctrines, the work of Compayre is of incomparable value. Though he is occupied chiefly with French pedagogy, he dis- cusses almost every aspect of the educational prob- lem, and always with great penetration and clear- ness.
Williams's History of Modern Education is the most recent work, and particularly adapted to American schools.
(77)
78 APPENDIX
THE REFORM IN EDUCATION
The Reformation marks the further limit of the modern period of educational history; and these be- ginnings of educational reform deserve very careful study. The compilation of Souquet, and particular- ly his introduction, will be found very helpful. Schmidt, Raumer, Compayre, and Paroz will supply an abundance of material bearing on this topic. For a study of the recognized educational reformers, the works of Mr. Quick and Mr. Barnard are invaluable.
ROUSSEAU AND HIS EMILE
With the progress of educational science, the in- fluence of Rousseau is perceptibly and steadily growing, and a careful study of the Emile is becom- ing imperative. This study may now be conven- iently prosecuted at first hand through the compila- tion just made by Souquet. The fairest estimate of Rousseau that I have yet seen, is contained in the second volume of Compayre.
JOSEPH PAYNE
By far the most valuable of recent contributions to educational literature from English sources, is Joseph Payne's Lectures, edited by his son, and con- taining an introduction by Mr. Quick. Mr. Payne was a disciple of Jacotot, and in this volume he gives an admirable exposition of his master's sys- tem. Outside of England, the doctrines of Jacotot enjoy but little consideration; but there are very few modern writers on education who are more worthy of serious study. Each of his paradoxes em- bodies a doctrine worth the knowing.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 79
THE OLD EDUCATION AND THE NEW In studying the later developments of educational thought, it is essential to keep in mind the fact that they embody a reaction against antagonistic doc- trines; and the further fact that "the suppression of an error is commonly followed by the temporary as- cendancy of a contrary one ". There are sharp points of contrast between the old education and the new. Each has a measure of truth and a measure of error; each is right in what it admits and wrong in what it denies ; and so each is in a great degree the complement of the other. The truth will be found to lie somewhere between the two extremes.
PESTALOZZI
No just and adequate estimate of Pestalozzi's in- fluence can be formed unless his doctrines are con- trasted with those that he sought to supplant. We are living in the midst of transformations that have been wrought through the influence of Pestalozzian- ism ; and so the present does not furnish the criteria by which to estimate the importance of this innova- tion in educational thought.
EVERY NEW PHASE IN EDUCATION EMBODIES AN IDEA.
No new movement in education can be adequately interpreted without taking into account the cognate phases of thought, social, political, philosophical, and religious, with which it co-existed. Some dom- inant idea will be found to underlie every system of educational doctrine. When the principle of AU- THORITY was dominant in church and state, it was
So APPENDIX
also dominant in the schools, and prescribed its methods of discipline and of instruction; and the decline of authority in church and state has induced a corresponding change in the methods of the school. The philosophical idea that is dominant in the new education is that of DEVELOPMENT; and in this country when the professional teacher must count with his constituents, there is the concurrent and modifying idea of UTILITY.
NEED OF A GENERAL HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL DOCTRINES
The construction of a general history of education, for the express purpose of tracing the rise and prog- ress of all the marked phases of educational thought, and characterized by the critical discernment that gives such charm and value to the work of Corn- payre, is a thing greatly to be desired at this time when questions of school policy are beginning to be discussed on a scientific basis.
BUISSON'S Dictiannaire de la Pedagogic
Buisson's Dictionnare de la Pedagogic is on all ac- counts the most valuable book of reference that can be commended to the professional teacher. Scarcely any other book will be required to supplement this SHORT HISTORY OF EDUCATION, so complete is its treat- ment of historical and biographical subjects.
In English, the latest general compilation is Son- nenschein's Cyclopaedia of Education, the American edition of which is published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.
C O M E N I U S
COMENIUS
COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DATES
Erasmus 1467-1536 Rousseau 1712-1778
Luther 1483-154(5 Diderot 1713-1784
Sturm 1507-1589 Condillac 1715-1780
Ascbam 1515-1568 Basedow 1723-1790
Ramus. 1515-1572 Kant 1724-1804
Montaigne 1533-1592 Pesialozzi 1746-1827
Bacon 1561-1626 Jacotot 1770-1840
Ratke 1571-1635 Fellenberg 1771-1844
COMENIUS ".1592-1671 Froebel 1782-1852
Descartes 1596-1650 Diesterweg 1790-1866
Milton 1608-1674 Cousin 1792-1867
Locke. . . 1632-1704 Beneke 1798-1856
Francke 1663-1727 Spencer 1820
OUTLINE BIOGRAPHY
1592. Born at Nivnitz, a village of Moravia, on the confines of Hungary ; early an orphan ; began, his education at the age of 16.
1610. Went to the Universities of Herborn and Hei- delberg; then travelled for ten years in Hol- land and perhaps in England.
1614. Returned to Bohemia and became director of the school in Prerau, where he published his. first work, Grammaticae Facilioris Pracccpta. (83)
84 APPENDIX
1618. Became pastor of the Bohemian Brethren in Fulneck.
1621. By the sack of Fulneck, lost his property, books, and MS.; and for several years was a refugee from religious persecution.
1627. By the Edict of July 31, followed the Mora- vians into permanent banishment and took refuge in Lissa Poland, where he wrote his Janua Linguarum Reserata.
1641. Went to London by the invitation of Parlia- ment, at the. instance of Samuel Hartlib (the friend of Milton), who, in 1631, had published at Oxford a part of the Didactica Magna.
1642. Went on an educational mission into Sweden, and thence to Elbing, Prussia.
1648. Made Bishop of the Moravians and took up his residence again in Lissa.
1650. Went to Patak, Hungary, to establish a model school on the principles of his Pansophia. While in Patak he wrote the most popular of his works, the Or bis Sensualium P ictus. On leaving Patak he returned to Lissa.
1656. On the burning of Lissa by the Polish Catho- lics, took refuge in Amsterdam. 1671. November 15, died at Amsterdam.
APPRECIATION
"The system which he sketched will be found to foreshadow the education of the future."
COMENIUS 85
u He was one of the first advocates of the teaching of science in schools."
" His kindness, gentleness, and sympathy, make him the forerunner of Pestalozzi." — EncycL Brit.
" Comenius founded nothing durable and distinc- tive ; he was but an admirable precursor. His work had to be again taken up, continued and perfected, by the educators of the following century, the most of whom did not know him — so soon was he forgot- ten— and who followed in his foot-steps, like Rous- seau and Pestalozzi, without suspecting it." — Buis- son.
"A Protestant grammarian and theologian; was a mad-man, but from this mad man we have a book entitled Janua Linguarum Reserata, which was trans- lated not only into twelve European languages, but also into the principal languages of Asia." — Enc* Mvthodiqiie.
" Of boundless generosity and intelligence, he embraced all knowledge and every nationality. Through every country — Poland, Hungary, Sweden, England, Holland — he went teaching, first Peace, and then the means of peace — Universal Fraternity. He wrote a hundred works, taught in a hundred cities. Sooner or later, the scattered members of this great man, that he left upon every route, will be reunited. " — Michelet.
" As a school reformer he was the forerunner of Rousseau, Basedow, and Pestalozzi, suggested a mode of instruction which renders learning attract- ive to children by pictures and illustrations, and
86 APPENDIX
wrote the first pictorial school-book." — New Amer. Cycl.
" Comenius is a grand and venerable figure of sorrow. Wandering, persecuted, and homeless, during the terrible and desolating thirty years' war, he never despaired ; but with enduring and faithful truth, labored unweariedly to prepare youth, by a better education, for a better future. His undes- pairing aspirations seem to have lifted up, in a large part of Europe, many good men, prostrated by the terrors of the times, and to have inspired them with the hope that by a pious and wise system of educa- tion, there would be reared up a race of men more pleasing to God." — Raitmcr.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
1. Cyclopaedia of Education. C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, 1889.
2. Buisson's Dictionnaire de Pedagogic et d'ln- struction Primaire. ire Partie. Paris, 1887.
3. Quick's Essays on Educational Reformers, Chapter VII. Syracuse, 1896.
4. Histoire Critique des Doctrines de L'Education en France, Par G. Compayre. Paris, 1879. Tome Premier, pp. 256-263.
;. Michelet. Nos Fils. Paris, 1877.
6. Jules Paroz. Histoire Universelle de la Peda- gogic. Paris, pp. 203-216.
7. Karl, Schmidt, Geschichte der Piidagogik. Co- then. 1873-1876. pp. 366-398, Dritter Band.
8. Karl von Raumer, Geschichte der Padagogik, Stuttgart. 1857. .pp. 48-100, Zweiter Theil.
9. Barnard's American Journal of Education. Vol. V., pp. 257-298. [A translation of No. 8.] Also Vol. VI, p. 585. [On the Qrbis Pictus^
10. Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary. London, 1735.
(87)
88 APPENDIX
11. Carpzov. Religionsuntersuchung der Boh- mischen und Mahrischen Briider.
12. Gindely. Ueber des J. A. Comenius' Leben und Wirksamkeit in der Fremde. (In the proceed- ings of the Vienna Academy of Science. Vienna,
1855.)
13. Leutbecher. Johann Amos Comenius, Lehr- kunst. Leipzig, 1853.
14. Dr. Eugen Pappenheim. Amos Comenius, der Begriinder der neuen Padagogik. Berlin, 1871.
15. K. A. Schmid. Padagogisches Handbuch fur Schule und Haus. Gotha, 1877.
16. Seyfifarth, L. W. J. A. Comenius, nach seinem Leben und seiner padagogischen Bedeutung. Leip- zig, 1871.
17. Beitrage zur Padagogik. Ueber die historische Darstellung der padagogischen Jdeen mit beson- derer Beziehungauf Rousseau und Comenius. Low- enberg, 1875.
18. Comenius, Amos, Die Mutterschule. Aufs Neue hrsg. v. Herm. Schroter. Weissenfels, 1864.
19. Hoffmeister, Herm. Comenius und Pestalozzi als Begriinder der Volksschule, wissenschaftlich dargestellt, 8vo. Berlin, 1877.
20. Laurie, S. S John Amos Gomenius, his Life and Work, i6mo. Syracuse, 1892.
21. Butler, Nicholas Murray. The Place of Com- enius in the History of Education, i6mo. Syra- cuse, 1892.
22. Maxwell, W. H. The Text-Books of Comen- ius, 8vo. Syracuse, 1892.
COMENIUS $9
NOTE. — " \Ve are assured that France will soon have two works upon Comenius, which, we hope, will be only a prelude 10 important studies relating to this eminent educator; one by M. Rieder and the other by M. Diog. Bertrand." — Die. de Pedag.
II
WORKS
1. Didactica Opera Omnia ab anno 1627 ad 1657 continuata. Amstelodamus, Chr. Conradus et Gabr. a Roy, 1657. 4 part, in-fol., avec port., 482, 462, 1064 et 110 col. — Brunei.
This edition contains the collected works of Co- menius, edited by himself, and published by the munificence of his Patron, Lorenzo de Geer.
2. Comenius, Johann Amos. Ausgewiihlte Schrif- ten, Mutterschule, Pansophia, Pangnosie, etc. Ue- bersetzt und mit Erliiuterungen versehen von Ju. Beeger und Johann Leutbecher, 8vo. Leipzig.
3. Comenius's (John Amos) Visible World ; or a Nomenclature and Pictures, of all the chief things that are in the World, etc., illustrated with 150 curi- ous rude woodcuts, i2mo. 1777. -
4. The Orbis Pictus of John Amos Comenius, 8vo. Syracuse, 1887.
5. Karl Richter. Padagogische Bibliothek. Eine Sammlung der wichtigsten padagogischen Schriften alter und neuerer Zeit. Leipzig.
Volume third contains the Didactica Magna, an
90 APPENDIX
appreciation of it, a Life of Comenius, and notes. Edited by Julius Beeger and Franz Zoubek.
6. Dr. Th. Lion. Bibliothek padagogischer Clas- siker. Langensalza, 1875. — Contains German tran- slations of the pedagogical works of Comenius.
7. Johann Amos Comenius. Grosse Unterichts- lehre (Didacttca Magna), mit einer Einleitung von Gustav Adolf Linder. Wien, 1877.
The Three Great Pedagogical \Vorks of Comenius
Comenius was a very prolific writer, being the author of more than eighty publications, written in Slavic (Czechic), Latin, and German ; but he owes his fame to the three following works.
I. DIDACTICA MAGNA, SEU OMNES OMXIA DOCENDI ARTIFICIUM.
This great work was begun in 1627, \vhile Come- nius was living in exile at Sloupna. It was finished in 1632, but remained in manuscript till 1849, when it was published in the original language (Czechic).
A translation of a part of the Didactica Magna, un- der the title of Prodromus Pansophiat, was published in London in 1639, through the mediation of Samuel Hartlib, by whose influence Parliament invited Co- menius to England to organize a reform in public education. Buisson, in his Dictionnaire de Pedagogic, pronounces the Didactica Magna " one of the most remarkable treatises that have been written on the science of education ".
91
II. JANUA LINGUARUM RESERATA This work, published at Lissa in 1631, was sug- gested by a book bearing the same title, written by an -Irish Jesuit named Batty, who was connected with the Jesuit College at Salamanca. It was translated, .as Comenius himself tells us, into Greek, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Belgian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and •even Mongolic. The general plan of the Janua may be seen from the following quotation : " Comenius believed that the knowledge of words should serve at the same time to acquire a knowledge of things. He therefore resolved to classify in methodical order all created things, with their Latin names, and a translation, in parallel columns ; and to make of this general vocabulary a universal repertory of informa- tion, where the pupil might at the same time learn Latin and general science. He collected eight thousand words, with which he constructed one thousand sentences, and these he distributed into one hundred chapters."
HII/ ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS, hoc est, omnium funda- mentalium in mini-do rerum, ft in vita actionum, pictura et no men-datura.
The first edition of this famous book was published at Nuremberg in 1657; and soon after a translation was made into English by Charles Hoole. The last English edition appeared in 1777, and this was re- printed in America in 1812. A fine reprint of the English edition of 1727, with reproduction of the 151 •copper-cut illustrations of the original edition of
92 APPENDIX
1658, was published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, in 1887.
This was the first illustrated school-book, and was the first attempt at what now passes under the name of " object lessons".
" The 'Orbis ' was, in substance, the same as the i Janua', though abbreviated, but it had this distinc- tive feature, that each subject was illustrated by a small engraving, in which everything named in the letter press below was marked with a number, and its name was found connected with the same num- ber in the text." — Quick.
Educational Principles of Comenius
(Arranged from Paroz's Historic Universelle de la Pedagogic.)
i. Instruction is easy in proportion as it follows the course of nature.
z. Instruction ought to be progressive and adapted to the growing vigor of the intellectual faculties.
3. It is a fundamental error to begin instruction' with languages and terminate it with things — math- ematics, natural history, etc.; for things are the sub- stance, the body, while words are the accident, the dress. These two portions of knowledge should be united, but we should begin with things, which are the objects of thought and of speech.
4. It is also an error to begin the study of language with grammar. We should first present the subject matter in an author or a well-arranged vocabulary. The form, /. e. the grammar, does not come till after- wards.
COMENIUS 93
5. We should first exercise the senses (perception), then the memory, then the intelligence, and lastly the judgment (reasoning). For science begins with the observation; the impressions received are then imprinted upon the memory and the imagination; the intelligence next seizes upon the notions held in store in the memory and from them deduces general ideas; finally the reason draws conclusions from the things sufficiently known and co-ordinated in the intelligence.
6. It is not sufficient, merely to make the pupil comprehend; he should also learn to express and to apply what he has comprehended.
7. It is not the shadow of things which impresses the senses and the imagination, but the things them- selves. It is then by a real intuition that instruction should begin, and not by a verbal description of things.
8. By observation, the pupil should first gain a general notion of an object, and should then observe each part by itself and in its relation to the whole.
9. Talent is developed by exercise. We learn to write by writing, to sing by singing, etc.
10. The study of languages ought to commence with the mother tongue. A language is learned bet- ter by use, by the ear, by writing, etc., than by rules, which should follow use in order to give it greater exactness.
-THE SCHOOL HULLETIX PUBLICATIONS.-
History of Modern Education,
The History of Modern Education. An account of Educational Opinion and Practice from the Revival of Learn- ing to the Present Decade. By SAMUEL G. WILLIAMS, Ph.D., Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in Cornell University. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 499. With 37 Portraits. $1.50.
This is a revised and enlarged edition of what was upon its first appearance altogether the fullest and most com- plete history of modern education now available. It is the only adequate prep- aration for examinations, and a neces- sary part of every teacher's working library.
The titles of the chapters will give some idea of its comprehensiveness. Those in italics appear for the first time in this revised edition.
Introductory. Valuable contributions to pedagogy from ancient days. I. Preliminaries of modern education. II. The Renaissance, and some inter- esting phases of education in the 16th century. III. Educational opinions of the 16th century. IV. Distinguished teachers of the 16th century, Melanehthon, Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, Ascham, Mulcaster, the Jesu- its. V. Some characteristics of education in the 17th century. VI. Princi- ples of the educational reformers. VII. The 17th century reformers. VIII. Female education and Fenelon. IX. The Oratory of Jesus. Beginnings of American education. X. Characteristics of education in the 18th century. XI. Important educational treatises of the 18th century: Rollin, Rousseau, Kant. XII. Basedow and the Philanthropise experiment. XIII. Pesta- lozzi and his work. XIV. General review of education in the 18th century, XV. Educational characteristics of the 19th century. XVI. Extension of popular education. XVII. Froebel and the Idndergarten. XVIII. Professional training of teachers, and school supervision. XIX. Manual and industrial training. XX. Improvements in methods of instruction. XXI. Discussion of relative value of studies.
There are also added an Analytic Appendix, for review ; the Syllabus on the History of Education prepared by the Department of Public Instruc- tion for the training classes of the State of New York, with references by page to this volume ; and an Index of 13 double column pages, much fuller than in the first edition,
The Critic calls it, " sensible in its views, and correct and clear in style." The American Journal of Education says: "It is not too much to say that for all ordinary purposes Prof. Williams's book is in itself a much more val- uable pedagogical library than could be formed with it omitted."
C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, • N. Y.
-777 A* SCHOOL P.I'LLKTIX ITHL/CATlOXti.-
Helps in the History of Education
By ROBERT HENRY QTICK.
420. Manilla 50 cts.: Cloth
(fional litfortner
16n»o, pi $1.00.
"With the suggestion that, xtmly should be made interesting. " wrote ( Jen- eral Morgan, when principal of the Rhode Island State Normal School. -'we most, heartily agree. How this m:i\ be done, the attentive reader will l>e helped in learning by the study of this admirable book." The American Jbrary Association recogni/e its liter- ary value by including our edition of it in their list published by the Bureau of Education of books that every pub- lic library should own. An entirely new illustrated edit ion has now been issued, with autobiography, chapter on Froebel, 21 portraits, and 13 illus- trations.
2. Lectures on the History of Education in Prussia and England. By JAMES DONALDSON. Cloth, 12m o, pp. 185. $1.00.
3. A Short History of Education. By Chancellor W. H. PAYNE. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 105. 50 cts.
This is a reprint of Oscar Browning's article in the Encyclopedia Bri- tannica, with notes on Comenius and Bibliography.
4. Sketches from the History of Education. By W. N. HAILMANN. Paper, 8vo, pp. 39. 20 cts.
This treats particularly of Luther, Bacon, Pestalozzi, Girard, Diester- weg, and Froebel.
5. History of the Philosophy of Pedagogics. By Prof. C. W. BEN- NETT. Leatherette, 16mo, pp. 43. 50 cts.
(>. Elementary Greek Education. By FRED H. LANE. Leatherette, 16mo. pp. 85. 50 cts.
7. History of the Burgh ,sV7/W.v of Scotland. By JAMES GRANT. Cloth, Kvo, pp. 571. $3.00. These were the original free schools of the world.
<s. The History of the High School of Edinburgh, I»y WILLIAM STE- VEN. Cloth, 12mo, pp. 610. $2.00.
!>. History of the Schools of Syracuse, X. Y. By EDWARD SMITH. Cloth, 8vo. gilt top, pp. 347. With 85 portraits and 30 pictures of buildings. $3.00. 10. Teachers' Institutes, Past and Present. By JAMES M. MILNE. Paper, 8vo, pp. 22. 25 cts.
it. History of Educational Journalism in the State of New York. By C. W. BARDEEN. Paper. 8vo, pp. 45. 40 cts.
12. Educational Publications in Italy. By PIERO BARBERA. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14. 15 cts. Written for the Columbian Exposition.
C. W. BARDKEN, Publisher, Syracuse, X. Y.
-THE SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS.-
Meiklejohn's Life of Andrew Bell.
An old Educational Reformer, Dr. Andrew Bell. By J. M. D. MEIKLE- JOHN, professor of the theory, history, and practice of education in the uni- versity of St. Andrews. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 182. $1.00.
Teachers of this generation can hardly realize what a power the moni- torial system was in the history of the first third of this century. It was the subject most debated when teachers met together and in the educational journals of the time. It was supposed to have revolutionized teaching, and in this country as well as in England and elsewhere its influence was enor- mous. Dr. Andrew Bell, its founder is buried in Westminster Abbey, his tablet being one of the first that meets the eye of the visitor. He left a fortune of a million dollars to educational uses, and founded the chairs of education in the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews.
Hitherto his biography could be obtained only in the three enormous volumes of 2,000 pages by Robert Southey; but Dr. Meiklejohn, who occu- pies at St. Andrews the chair Dr. Bell founded, has written this memoir, which is as sprightly and interesting as the big compilation of Southey's is dreary and dull. He tells of Dr. Bell's college life, of his going to Virginia to be a tutor; of his shipwreck on his return voyage; of the duel he fought, when, being short-sighted and excitable, he fired at the seconds instead of his opponent; of his being offered $2,500 to vote for one candidate and im- mediately voting for the other; of his journey to India, where he was put in charge of an orphan school for boys; of his difficulty in finding teach- ers, and his discovery of the plan of mutual instruction; of the enormous success that this plan met with, first in India, and afterward in Great Britain and throughout the world.
Incidentally Prof. Meiklejohn tells much of the state of education at the time Dr. Bell began to introduce his system, when in Ireland for in- stance, the boy who had written the best copy was ordered by the master to pull the hair of the boy who had written the worst, and so to do until they arrived at their seats in the school again. It was one of Dr. Bell's corre- spondents who speaks of the death of a schoolmaster in Swabia who had superintended a seminary 51 years with severity; had given 91 1,500 callings, 124,000 floggings, 209,000 custodies, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, 22,700 tasks by heart, 700 stands upon peas, 600 kneels on a sharp edge, 500 foolscaps, 1,700 holds of rods.
In short the volume is a vivacious and interesting history of the time, as well as the best biography of one of England's most eminent teachers.
C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y.
-THE SCHOOL BUL7.ETJN PrTtLTCA TIONS.
THOMAS ARNOLD.
Biographies of Great Teachers.
1. A Memoir of Roger Ascham. by SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. ; and selec-
tions from the Life of Thomas Arnold, by Dean STANLEY. Edited, with In- troductions and Notes by JAMES S. CAR- LISLE. 16mo, pp. 2;V2. Manilla, 50 cts.; Cloth, $1.00.
Besides the biography of Ascham in full this volume contains selections from klThe Schoolmaster", with fac- simile of the ancient title-page. We also publish Ascham 's Complete Works* in four handsome volumes at $5.00.
From Stanley's "Life of Arnold'' those chapters have been taken which refer to his work as a teacher, and arer published without change. Thus the book gives in full compass and at a low price all that is most important in. the lives of these two great teachers.
" No better reading could be selected for the teacher, none more stimu- lating, none more softening, than the lives of these two men, so conspicuous for their achievement as teachers."— The Evangelist.
2. John Amos Comenius, Bishop of the Moravians; his Life and Educa* tioncd Works. By S. S. LAURIE. 16mo, pp. 232. Manilla, 50 cts. ; Cloth, $1 .
«?. An Old Educational Reformer. Dr. Andreiv Bett. By J. M. D. MEIKLV- JOHN. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 182. $1.00.
Dr. Bell was the founder of the Monitorial System that swept over Eng- land and America in the early part of this century, and was at that time the most famous teacher in the world. Prof. Meikle John has made his biography as entertaining as it is important in the history of education.
U. Pestalozzi : his Aim and Work. By Baron DEGUIMPS. Translated by MARGARET CUTHBERTSON CROMBIE. Cloth, 12mo, pp. 336. $1.50.
5. Autobiography of Frederich Frcebel. Translated and annotated by EMILIE MICHAELIS and H. KEATLEY MOORE. Cloth, 12mo, pp. 183. $1.50.
" He writes so simply and confidentially that no one can fail to under' stand everything in this new translation. It would be of great benefit to American youth for fathers and mothers to read this book for themselves, instead of leaving it entirely to professional teachers."— New York Herald.
6. The Educational Labors of Henry Barnard. By WILL S. MONROE, Leatherette, 16mo, pp. 35. 50 cts.
7. Essays on Educational Reformers. By R. H. QUICK. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 331. $1.50.
Its vivacious style makes it the most interesting of educational histories. We publish separately at 15 cts. each these chapters : I. The Jesuits, II. Co menius, III. Locke, IV. Rousseau, V. Basedow, VI. Jacotot, VII. PestalozzL
C. W. BARDEEX, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y.
.
FOURTEEN DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed.
|
2HayJ>CiF |
(N)l |
|
L* * |
|
|
16MKR'M^ |
|
|
IVT ninri w |
|
|
1MI A Q tOi ijkjfc^fc |ilrli% JJ p9BPUI |
|
|
4Apr'62lV. |
|
|
Rtv. ^ LD |
|
|
MAR 2 6 1962 |
|
VB 04220
313154
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY