Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/773

Rh, and paid special attention to good conduct and bodily exercise. The instruction was conducted by most perfect mechanism, the memory was inordinately developed, and obedience absolute. This system served the Church; and no better scholars, according to this standard, could be found than those who came from the institutes of the Jesuits.

The first condition for education is freedom—a freedom limited by nothing except the individual conscience and the rights of our fellow-men. Therefore any educational system established solely for the benefit of a special party or creed can have value for those persons only who, of choice, belong to the party, and of choice accept the creed. We have seen that middle-age training was exclusively a contra-earthly training. We have seen, also, that education was not allowed the necessary freedom by the reformers. Their liberty of conscience, as all know, was but slavery compared with the later and fuller realization. Our present point of outlook is the wide-spread attention given to the subject of education. The thing to be done is to sever education from its constrained, unnatural relation to the Church. During the last years of Luther's life (1546), this work was commenced by the two Germans Trotzendorf and Sturm. Most noticeable here is the unconsciousness of these men as to the significance of their undertaking. John Sturm was born at Schleiden in 1507. In 1537 he came to Strasburg, organized the gymnasium here, and remained as its rector from 1538 to 1583. It is said that the schools established by Sturm and under the direction of his teachers numbered many thousand students, among them pupils from Portugal, Poland, and England.

The central thing in all right education was, according to Sturm, the Latin language. Unlike Melanchthon, he wished Latin to be studied for its own sake, not for the Church. "He would secure for the German youth the same culture which distinguished the youths of Greece and Rome." Education is passing from the control of the Church to the control of Greece and Rome. This exchange was an advantage, though it was by no means the liberty which maketh free indeed. For centuries boys were to study Greek and Latin nolens volens, up, down, and all around. Here is the origin, the natural origin, of that supremacy of the classics in education which, inevitable and serviceable for many years, seeks in vain to maintain itself forever. We shall appreciate Sturm's system best by looking at the plan of his schools, which, fortunately, has been preserved.

"For the first seven years the mother shall bring up the child. At the seventh year the boy is brought to school. The school-training lasts nine years. Then begins the freer method, such as hearing lectures and practicing disputations. Of the nine classes which the scholar must pass through in nine years, seven classes and seven years are set apart for the mastery of the extra pure Latin speech, two