The History of Education

After about the year 1000 a revival of something like city life begins to be noticeable here and there in the records of the time (R. 94 a), and by 1100 these signs begin to manifest themselves in many places and lands. By 1200 the cities of Europe were numerous, though small, and their importance in the life of the times [29] was rapidly increasing (R. 94 b).

THE RISE OF A CITY CLa.s.s. As the mediaeval towns increased in size and importance the inhabitants, being human, demanded rights. Between 1100 and 1200 there were frequent revolts of the people of the mediaeval towns against their feudal overlord, and frequent demands were made for charters granting privileges to the towns. Sometimes these insurrections were put down with a b.l.o.o.d.y hand. Sometimes, on the contrary, the overlord granted a charter of rights, willingly or unwillingly, and freed the people from obligation to labor on the lands in return for a fixed money payment.

Sometimes the king himself granted the inhabitants a charter by way of curbing the power of the local feudal lord or bishop. The towns became exceedingly skillful in playing off lord against bishop, and the king against both. In England, Flanders, France, and Germany some of the towns had become wealthy enough to purchase their freedom and a charter at some time when their feudal overlord was particularly in need of money. These charters, or birth certificates for the towns, were carefully drawn and officially sealed doc.u.ments of great value, and were highly prized as evidences of local liberty. The doc.u.ment created a "free town," and gave to the inhabitants certain specified rights as to self-government, the election of magistrates--aldermen, mayor, burgomaster--the levying and payment of taxes, and the military service to be rendered. Before the evolution of strong national governments these charters created hundreds of what were virtually little City-States throughout Europe (R. 95).

In these towns a new estate or cla.s.s of people was now created (R. 96), in between the ruling bishops and lords on the one hand and the peasants tilling the land on the other. These were the citizens--freemen, bourgeoisie, burghers. Out of this new cla.s.s of city dwellers new social orders--merchants, bankers, tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen--in time arose, and these new orders soon demanded rights and obtained some form of education for their children. The guild or apprentices.h.i.+p education which early developed in the cities to meet the needs of artisans and craftsmen (R. 99), and the burgh or city schools of Europe, which began to develop in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were the educational results of the rise of cities and the evolution of these new social cla.s.ses. The time would soon be ripe for the mysteries of learning to be pa.s.sed somewhat farther down the educational pyramid, and new cla.s.ses in society would begin the mastery of its symbols.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID (From Smith, W. R., _Educational Sociology_, p. 176) The concave pyramid suggests comparative numbers. Formal education began at the top, and has slowly worked downward.]

THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. The first city of mediaeval Europe to obtain commercial prominence was Venice. She early sold salt and fish obtained from the lagoons to the Lombards in the Valley of the Po, and sent trading s.h.i.+ps to the Greek East. By the year 1000 Venetian s.h.i.+ps were bringing the luxuries and riches of the Orient to Venice, and the city soon became a great trading center. There the partially civilized Christian knight "spent splendidly," and the Bohemian, German, and Hunnish lords came [30]

to buy such of the luxuries of the East as they could afford. By 1100 Venice was a free City-State, the mistress of the Adriatic, and the trade of the East with Christian Europe pa.s.sed over her wharves. From the Crusades she profited greatly, carrying knights eastward in the great fleet she had developed, and carpets, fabrics, perfumes, spices, dyes, drugs, silks, and precious stones on the return voyage. From Tana and Trebizond her traders penetrated far into the interior. Her s.h.i.+ps and merchants "held the Golden East in fee." By 1400 she was the wealthiest and most powerful city in Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES]

Genoa in time became the great rival of Venice. Ma.r.s.eilles also developed a large trade in the Mediterranean and with the north. From these three cities trade routes ran to the cities of Flanders, England, and Germany, as is shown in the map below. By the thirteenth century, Augsburg, Nuremburg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres, Bruges, and London were developing into great commercial cities. Despite bad roads, bad bridges, [31] bad inns, "robber knights" and bandits, the commerce once carried on by Rome with her provinces was reviving. Great fairs, or yearly markets, came to be held in the large interior towns, to which merchants came from near and far to display and exchange their wares, and, still more important, from the standpoint of advancing general education, to exchange ideas and experiences. The "luxuries" displayed at these markets by traveling merchants from the south--salt, pepper, spices, sugar, drugs, dyestuffs, gla.s.s beads, gla.s.sware, table implements, perfumes, ornaments, underwear, articles of dress, silks, velvets, carpets, rugs--dazzled and astounded the simple townspeople of western Europe. These fairs became educational forces of a high order.

THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY AND BANKING. The trading of articles at seaports and at the interior city fairs came first, and this soon worked a revolution in industry. Instead of agriculture being almost the only occupation, and the feeding of the local population the only purpose, with only such arts and industries practiced as were needed to supply the wants of the townsmen, it now became possible to create a surplus to barter at the fairs for luxuries from the outside. Local industries, heretofore of but little importance, now developed into trades, and the manufacture of articles for outside sale was begun. At first manufacturing was very limited in scope, and confined largely to local handicrafts or the imitation of imported articles, but later new and important industries arose--the gla.s.s industry in Venice, the gold and silver industry of Florence, the weaving industry at Mainz and Erfurt, and the wool industry of Flanders. The craftsman and artisan, as well as the merchant and trader, were now developed in the towns, and soon became important members of the new social order. As serfs and villeins [32] were set free from the land [33] they came to the towns, adding more members to the new industrial cla.s.ses (R. 96). From 1200 on there was a great revival of industry in western Europe, and by 1500 merchants and craftsmen had won back the place once held by merchants and craftsmen in Roman life and trade.

At Florence a banking cla.s.s arose, and instead of barter, banks and the use of money and credit were developed. From Florence this system gradually extended to the other commercial cities. Gradually the mediaeval objection to the taking of interest for the use of money, which the Church had forbidden in the early Middle Ages

Nothing tends so powerfully to demand or secure these things as the possession of wealth among a people.

EDUCATION FOR THESE NEW SOCIAL CLa.s.sES. With the evolution of these new social cla.s.ses an extension of education took place through the formation of guilds. [34] The merchants of the Middle Ages traded, not as individuals, nor as subjects of a State which protected them, for there were as yet no such States, but as members of the guild of merchants of their town, or as members of a trading company. Later, towns united to form trading confederations, of which the Hanseatic League of northern Germany was a conspicuous example. These burgher merchant guilds became wealthy and important socially; [35] they were chartered by kings and given trading privileges a.n.a.logous to those of a modern corporation (R.

95); they elbowed their way into affairs of State, and in time took over in large part the city governments; they obtained education for themselves, and fought with the church authorities for the creation of independent burgh schools; [36] they began to read books, and books in the vernacular began to be written for them; [37] they in time vied with the clergy and the n.o.bility in their patronage of learning; they everywhere stood with the kings and princes to compel feudal lords to stop warfare and plundering and to submit to law and order; [38] and they entertained royal personages and drew n.o.bles, clergy, and gentry into their honorary members.h.i.+p, thus serving as an important agency in breaking down the social-cla.s.s exclusiveness of the Middle Ages. In these guilds, which were self-governing bodies debating questions and deciding policies and actions, much elementary political training was given their members which proved of large importance at a later time.

In the same way the craft guilds rendered a large educational service to the small merchant and worker, as they provided the technical and social education of such during the later period of the Middle Ages and in early modern times, and protected their members from oppression in an age when oppression was the rule. With the revival of trade and industry craft guilds arose all over western Europe. One of the first of these was the candle-makers' guild, organized at Paris in 1061. Soon after we find large numbers of guilds--masons, shoemakers, harness-makers, bakers, smiths, wool-combers, tanners, saddlers, spurriers, weavers, goldsmiths, pewterers, carpenters, leather-workers, cloth-workers, pinners, fishmongers, butchers, barbers--all organized on much the same plan. These were the working-men's fraternities or labor unions of mediaeval Europe.

Each trade or craft became organized as a city guild, composed of the "masters," "journeymen" (paid workmen), and "apprentices." The great mediaeval doc.u.ment, a charter of rights guaranteeing protection, was usually obtained. The guild for each trade laid down rules for the number and training of apprentices, [39] the conditions under which a "journeyman" could become a "master," [40] rules for conducting the trade, standards to be maintained in workmans.h.i.+p, prices to be charged, and dues and obligations of members (R. 97). They supervised work in their craft, cared for the sick, buried the dead, and looked after the widows and orphans. Often they provided one or more priests of their own to minister to the families of their craft, and gradually the custom arose of having the priest also teach something of the rudiments of religion and learning to the children of the members. In time money and lands were set aside or left for such purposes, and a form of chantry school, which later evolved into a regular school, often with instruction in higher studies added, was created for the children of members [41] of the guild (R. 98).

APPRENTICEs.h.i.+P EDUCATION. For centuries after the revival of trade and industry all manufacturing was on a small scale, and in the home-industry stage. There was, of course, no machinery, and only the simple tools known from ancient times were used. In a first-floor room at the back, master, journeymen, and apprentices working together made the articles which were sold by the master or the master's wife and daughter in the room in front.

The manufacturer and merchant were one. Apprentices were bound to a master for a term of years (R. 99), often paying for the training and education to be received, and the master boarded and lodged both the apprentices and the paid workmen in the family rooms above the shop and store.

The form of apprentices.h.i.+p education and training which thus developed, from an educational point of view, forms for us the important feature of the history of these craft guilds. With the subdivision of labor and the development of new trades the craft-guild idea was extended to the new occupations, and a steady stream of rural labor flowing to the towns was absorbed by them and taught the elements of social usages, self- government, and the mastery of a trade. Throughout all the long period up to the nineteenth century this apprentices.h.i.+p education in a trade and in self-government const.i.tuted almost the entire formal education the worker with his hands received. The sons of the barbarian invaders, as well as their knightly brothers, at last were busy learning the great lessons of industry, cooperation, and personal loyalty. Here begins, for western Europe, "the n.o.bility of labor--the long pedigree of toil." So well in fact did this apprentice system of training and education meet the needs of the time that it persisted, as was said above, well into the nineteenth century (Rs. 200, 201, 242, 243), being displaced only by modern power machinery and systematized factory methods. During the later Middle Ages and in modern times it rendered an important educational service; in the later nineteenth century it became such an obstacle to educational and industrial progress that it has had to be supplemented or replaced by systematic vocational education.

INFLUENCE OF THESE NEW MOVEMENTS. We thus see, by the end of the twelfth century, a number of new influences in western Europe which point to an intellectual awakening and to the rise of a new educated cla.s.s, separate from the monks and clergy on the one hand or the n.o.bility on the other, and to the awakening of Europe to a new att.i.tude toward life. Saracen learning, filtering across from Spain, had added materially to the knowledge Europe previously had, and had stimulated new intellectual interests. Scholasticism had begun its great work of reorganizing and systematizing theology, which was destined to free philosophy, hitherto regarded as a dangerous foe or a suspected ally, from theology and to remake entirely the teaching of the subject. Civil and canon law had been created as wholly new professional subjects, and the beginnings of the teaching of medicine had been made. Instead of the old Seven Liberal Arts and a very limited course of professional study for the clerical office being the entire curriculum, and Theology the one professional subject, we now find, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of new and important professional subjects of large future significance--subjects destined to break the monopoly of theological study and put an end to logistic hair-splitting. The next step in the history of education came in the development of inst.i.tutions where thinking and teaching could be carried on free from civil or ecclesiastical control, with the consequent rise of an independent learned cla.s.s in western Europe. This came with the rise of the universities, to which we next turn, and out of which in time arose the future independent scholars.h.i.+p of Europe, America, and the world in general.

We also discover a series of new movements, connected with the Crusades, the rise of cities, and the revival of trade and industry, all of which clearly mark the close of the dark period of the Middle Ages. We note, too, the evolution of new social cla.s.ses--a new Estate--destined in time to eclipse in importance both priest and n.o.ble and to become for long the ruling cla.s.ses of the modern world. We also note the beginnings of an important independent system of education for the hand-workers which sufficed until the days of steam, machinery, and the evolution of the factory system. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were turning-points of great significance in the history of our western civilization, and with the opening of the wonderful thirteenth century the western world is well headed toward a new life and modern ways of thinking.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is it that a strong religious control is never favorable to originality in thinking?

2. Show how the work of the Nestorian Christians for the Mohammedan faith was another example of the h.e.l.lenization of the ancient world.

3. Would it be possible for any people anywhere in the world today to make such advances as were made at Bagdad, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, without such work permanently influencing the course of civilization and learning everywhere? To what is the difference due?

4. What were the chief obstacles to Europe adopting at once the learning from Mohammedan Spain, instead of waiting centuries to discover this learning independently? 5. Why did Aristotle's work seem of much greater value to the mediaeval scholar than the Moslem science? What are the relative values to-day?

6. Why should the light literature of Spain be spoken of as a gay contagion? Did this Christian att.i.tude toward fiction and poetry continue long?

7. In what ways was the _Sic et Non_ of Abelard a complete break with mediaeval traditions?

8. How did the fact that Dialectic (Logic) now became the great subject of study in itself denote a marked intellectual advance? What was the significance of the prominence of this study for the future of thinking?

9. What was the effect on inquiry and individual thinking of the method of presentation used by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his _Summa Theologica_?

10. How do you explain the all-absorbing interest in scholasticism during the greater part of a century?

11. State the significance, for the future, of the revival of the study of Roman law: (a) intellectually; (b) in shaping future civilization.

12. How do you explain the Christian att.i.tude toward disease, and the scientific treatment of it? Has that att.i.tude entirely pa.s.sed away?

Ill.u.s.trate.

13. Why was it such a good thing for the future of civilization in England and France that so many of its n.o.bility perished in the Crusades?

14. State a number of ways in which the Crusade movements had a beneficial effect on western Europe.

15. Show how the revival of commerce was an educative and a civilizing influence of large importance. 16. Would the organization of commerce and banking, and the establishment of the sanct.i.ty of obligations in a country, be one important measure of the civilization to which that country had attained? Ill.u.s.trate.

17. Show how the development of industry and commerce and the acc.u.mulation of wealth tend to promote order and security, and to extend educational advantages.

18. Contrast a mediaeval guild and a modern labor union. A guild and a modern fraternal and benevolent society.

19. Why did apprentices.h.i.+p education continue so long with so little change, when it is now so rapidly being superseded?

20. Does the rise of a new Estate in society indicate a period of slow or rapid change? Why is such an evolution of importance for education and civilization?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are reproduced:

85. Draper: The Moslem Civilization in Spain.

86. Draper: Learning among the Moslems in Spain.

87. Norton: Works of Aristotle known by 1300.

88. Averroes: On Aristotle's Greatness.

89. Roger Bacon: How Aristotle was received at Oxford.

90. Statutes: How Aristotle was received at Paris.

(a) Decree of Church Council, 1210 A.D.

(b) Statutes of Papal Legate, 1215 A.D.

(c) Statutes of Pope Gregory, 1231 A.D.

(d) Statutes of the Masters of Arts, 1254 A.D.

91. Cousin: Abelard's _Sic et Non_.

(a) From the Introduction.

(b) Types of Questions raised for Debate.

92. Rashdall: The Great Work of the Schoolmen.

93. Justinian: Preface to the Justinian Code.

94. Giry and Reville: The Early Mediaeval Town.

(a) To the Eleventh Century.

(b) By the Thirteenth Century.

95. Gross: An English Town Charter.