Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/752

* EDUCATION. 65A EDUCATION. upon which interest had been centred for many generations. Intellectual interests were stimu- lated, and the conception and purpose of edu- cation was broadened by the activities of such men as Petrarch, such teachers as Viltorino da Fcltre. and finally hy the influence of the univer- sities, though they had responded somewhat slow- ly to the new influences. " The Renaissance emphasis upon the lin<ruistie character of education introduced new secular in- terests into the then prevalent system. In early years instruction had to be of a reli.aions charac- ter, and hence centred in the religious literature, which demandeil a knowledge of the Latin lan- guage, lliglicr instruction was. to a large extent, prei)aratioii for controversial life in connection with religious doctrines and literature, and hence had also to he linguistic in its elements. The Re- naissance interest in the rudimentary sciences and in the .TSthetic element in literature was almost wholly eliminated from organized educational ef- forts :" while in addition to this, the religious con- flicts introduced by the Reformation movement, so agitated and demoralized the social, domestic, and political conditions of the times, that organized education, subjected like all other institutions to the distressfulstorms of the period, suffered great- ly in the general upheaval. Xevertheless. during this agitated sixteenth century, there were educa- tional influences at work, which crystallized into definite school organization and procedures, best typified by the work of Johannes Sturm (q.v.), and later by that of the Jesuits. Sturm, who was the head of the Strassburg Gymnasium from 1537 to 15S2. organized a ten years' course of study, consisting of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and literature. Not till late in his forty-five j-ears' experience did he introduce any study of mathematics into the last years of his curriculum. Sturm's ideas concerning organization and sub- ject matter were most influential in shaping the developing school system of the (ierman States. His course of study, slightly amplified, was adopt- ed in the higher schools soon to become common under the term .<7,i/"i"d)Iic or grammar schools then being founded to some extent in Kngland. In the latter part of the sixteenth century the .Jesuit Order fornuilated its Ratio Kttidiorum (q.v.), embodying many ideas similar to those of .Sturm. Their numerous schools were the most eflicient and popular up to the middle of the eighteenth centurv', by the end of which there were 612 colleges. 157 normal schools, and 24 iniversities. Sturm and the Jesuits only organized the humanistic education- al ideas of the Renaissance: and the resulting ed- ucation was in its content a wholly literary one of the extremely classical type, wliile its purpose and discipline were largely determined by reli- gious influences. Sturm was a Ciceronian, and it was wholly with the purpose of producing the ability to use the Ciceronian Latin and of securing the discipline entailed by this process that the dominant educators of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries labored. During this period there were not wanting, however, those who protested against this formal education, and insisted that the purpose of the study of the classical literature was the possession of the knowledge contained therein, and not yet to be found in any of the vernacular literatures. Erasmus, though a humanist, took this jjosition ; but the two French- men Rabelais (q.v.) and .Montaigne (q.v.) were the chief of these, though about the middle of the seventeenth century John Milton issued his Troc- tate on Editcalioii, which demanded that the whole range of the sciences and arts should be studied in the Greek and Latin literature, and propoiuuled this notable definition of education, luimely. ""1 call a complete and generous education that wiiich fits a man to iierfoiiii justly, skillful- ly, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war." Bj' Milton's time, however, there was abroad a new spirit in education, in which he participated to some ex- tent. This was the same spirit that was repre- sented in ijhilosophy by Descartes and in science by Bacon: in education the great exemplar was Comenius (q.v.). The educational influence of Coinenius was ( 1 ) in broadening the conception of education beyond the narrow literary and lin- guistic confines until it inchnhd the whole realm of knowledge, as conceived in the popular pan- sophic philosophy of the time: (2) in organizing education into a definite institutional hierarchy, and systematizing its subject matter into a definite course of study, which inchided the ele- ments of all the sciences, both natural and social : (3) in introducing improved methods of instruc- tion based on conceptions, more or less erroneous, it is true, of nat>iral jiroccsses. These ideas were embodied in a series of textbooks, the most im- portant of which was the Orbis Pictiis (q.v.). Comenius was not alone, even in the educational field, in standing for these new ideas. Ratiehius (q.v.), or Ratke. had preceded him. but had ex- erted little influence, owing rather to his tempera- mental defects than to the novelty of his ideas. Even in the preceding century Rabelais and Mon- taigne had led in the criticism of the prevailing ed- ucati(mal ideas and practices, and while they had little influence on school work or little knowledge of the technique of the educaticmal process, both opposed the extreme classicism of the time, pro- tested against the acceptance of erudition as the aim of education, of the formal linguistic dis- cipline as the purpose of the study of the classical literature, and held even more broadly that experience in life gave the purpose to education, so far as it was a definitely organized process. Rabelais and Montaigne were significant rather as protestants, giving an endiryonic fornuilation to a conception of education to be further devel- oped and made practical by such men as Co- menius. The practical aspect of the Comenian movement was limited to the seventeenth century, though the line of thought was continued. In 10!)3 .Tohn Locke published his Thoiiflhis Coyi- cmiiiip I^dtication, which continued the general thought of Comenius. though without rei^ognizing the impin-tance of a scientific rather than lin- gui>tic curriculum as might have Ih'cu expected. This work of Locke has prnbaldy been of wider influence than any other treatise on education written in the English language, imless it be HerlH'rt Spencer's Fdtiration. Lo<'ke emphasized the moral and physical aspects of education, in these respects exerting a profound and lasting impression on English edueati(Ui. both under the tutorial system which he approved and in the