The History of Education

[1] Representing not over one tenth of the population, the Protestants in France had from the first been subjected to much persecution. In the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew (1572) over one thousand had been ma.s.sacred in Paris and ten thousand more in the provinces. After some warfare, a treaty was made, in 1598, under which the so-called "Edict of Nantes"

guaranteed religious toleration for the Protestants. In 1685 this was revoked, and their ministers were given fifteen days to leave France. The members were, however, forbidden to leave. Many, though, got away, escaping to the Low Countries, England, and to America.

[2] The culmination of this dissatisfaction came in 1649, when Charles I was beheaded and "The Commonwealth" was established under Cromwell. During the troubled times which followed (1649-60) much damage was done to the churches of England by way of eliminating vestiges of "popery."

[3] Some of these went back to England--many after the establishment of the Protestant Commonwealth under Cromwell (1649). It has been estimated, for three of the early colonies, that the population by decades was approximately as follows:

1630 1640 1650 1660 New Netherlands.............. 500 1000 3000 6000 Ma.s.sachusetts................ 1300 14000 18000 25000 Virginia...................... 3000 8000 17000 33000

[4] The name and the form came alike from old England, where an irregular area known as a "town" or a "towns.h.i.+p," const.i.tuted the unit of representation in the s.h.i.+remoats and the members.h.i.+p of the church parish.

Almost every town and parish officer known in England was created by the new towns in New England, with practically the same functions as in the old home.

[5] "The settlers were in the first freshness of their Utopian enthusiasm, and their church establishment was the very heart of their enterprise. It became therefore a matter of primary importance to educate preachers. For ages preparation for the ministry had consisted mainly in acquiring a knowledge of Latin, the sacred tongue of western Christendom. Though the Latin service was no longer used by Protestants, and the Vulgate Bible had been dethroned by the original text, and though the main stream of English theology was by this time flowing in the channel of the mother tongue, the notion that all ministers should know Latin had still some centuries of tough life in it." (Eggleston, E., _The Transit of Civilization_, p. 225.)

[6] For example, the town of Boston, in 1641, devoted the income from Deere Island to the support of schools, and Plymouth, in 1670, appropriated the income from the Cape Cod fis.h.i.+ng industry to the support of grammar schools (R. 194 c).

These are among the earliest of the permanent endowments for education in America.

[7] See _The Development of School Support in Colonial Ma.s.sachusetts_, by George L. Jackson, for a careful study of the different early methods of school support.

[8] The Puritan emigrants to New England represented a st.u.r.dy and well- educated cla.s.s of English country squires and yeomen. They came of thrifty and well-to-do stock, the s.h.i.+ftless and incompetent not being represented.

All had had good educational advantages, and many were graduates of Cambridge University. It has been a.s.serted that probably never since has the proportion of college men in the community been so large.

[9] Martin, Geo. H., _The Evolution of the Ma.s.sachusetts Public-School System_, pp. 14-16.

[10] The charging of a tuition fee to those who could afford to pay was a common European practice of the time, nevertheless the public authorities --at that time a mixture of civil and church officials--provided the school, employed and licensed the teacher, determined the textbooks to be used, and laid down the conditions under which the school should be conducted. The schoolmaster a.s.sisted the church by partic.i.p.ating in the Sunday services. The elementary school of the Dutch, which was copied in the New Netherland, was thus a combination of a public and parochial, and a free and pay school.

[11] This was, of course, much more true of New York City and Island than of the outlying Dutch villages. In these latter a public school was for long maintained.

[12] Draper, A. S., _Origin and Development of the New York Common School System_.

[13] Among the German Lutherans, who const.i.tuted nearly one fourth of the total population of the colony, a school is claimed to have been established alongside the church by each of the congregations "at the earliest possible period after its formation." The close connection between these Lutheran congregations and their schools may be seen from the following contract, dated at Lancaster, in 1774:

"I, the undersigned, John Hoffman, parochial teacher of the church at Lancaster, have promised in the presence of the congregation, to serve as choirister, and, as long as we have no pastor, to read sermons on Sunday. In summer I promise to hold cathechetical instruction with the young, as becomes a faithful teacher, and also to lead them in the singing and attend to the clock."

[14] The seventeenth-century Virginia legislation relating to education is as follows:

1643. Orphans to be educated "according to the competence of their estate."

1646. "If the estate be so meane and inconsiderate that it will not reach to a free education, then that orphan [shall] be bound to some manuall trade... except

1660-61. "To avoid sloth and idleness... as also for the relief of parents whose poverty extends not to giving [their children]

breeding, the justices of the peace should... bind out children to tradesmen or husbandmen to be brought up in some good and lawful calling."

[15] "Perhaps the most remarkable, because the most widespread and complex ill.u.s.tration of the educational genius of Calvinism is to be found in the American colonies, where the various European streams of Calvinism so converged that the seventeenth-century colonists were predominantly Calvinists--not merely the Puritans of New England, but the Dutch, Walloons, Huguenots, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish, with a considerable Puritan admixture in Anglican Virginia and Catholic Maryland." (Foster, H. D., in Monroe's _Cyclopedia of Education_, vol. I, p. 498.)

[16] "To ill.u.s.trate how omnipresent this religious atmosphere was, I cannot do better than to cite the occasion when Judge Sewell found that the spout which conducted the rain water from his roof did not perform its office. After patient searching, a ball belonging to the small childeren was found lodged in the spout. Thereupon the father sent for the minister and had a season of prayer with his boys that their mischief or carelessness might be set in its proper aspect and that the event might be sanctified to their spiritual good. Powers of darkness and of light were struggling for the possession of every soul, and it was the duty of parents, ministers, and teachers to lose no opportunity to pluck the children as brands from the burning." (Johnson Clifton, _Old-Time Schools and Schoolbooks_, p. 12.)

CHAPTER XVI

[1] Thales had guessed that water was the primal element from which all had been derived; Anaximenes guessed air; Herac.l.i.tus fire; Pythagoras held that number was the essence of all things; Empedocles thought that fire and heat, accompanied by "indestructible forces," formed the basis; Xenophanes had guessed air, fire, water, and earth, and had worked out a complete scheme of creation. For an interesting discussion of these early attempts to explain creation, see J. W. Draper, _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_, vol. 1, chap. iv.

[2] Among the treatises by him accepted as genuine are _On Airs, Waters, and Places_; _On Epidemics_; _On Regimen in Acute Diseases_; _On Fractures_; and _On Injuries of the Head_.

[3] For example, Hippocrates had held that the human body contains four "humors"--blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile--and that disease was caused by the undue acc.u.mulation of some one of these humors in some organ, which it was the business of the physician to get rid of by blood- letting, blistering, purging, or other means.

[4] From a collection of doggerel rhymes put out by two pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, in 1618, by the names of Gra.s.sner and Gross, to interpret the orthodox theory of comets to peasants and school children.

[5] "The earth is a sphere, situated in the center of the heavens; if it were not, one side of the heavens would appear nearer to us than the other, and the stars would be larger there. The earth is but a point in comparison to the heavens, because the stars appear of the same magnitude and at the same distance _inter se_, no matter where the observer goes on the earth. It has no motion of translation.... If there were a motion, it would be proportionate to the great ma.s.s of the earth and would leave behind animals and objects thrown into the air. This also disproves the suggestion made by some, that the earth, while immovable in s.p.a.ce, turns round on its own axis." (Ptolemy, Digest of argument of Book 1 of the _Almagest_.)

[6] In the dedicatory letter Copernicus states that he had had the completed ma.n.u.script in his study for thirty-six years, and published it now only on the urging of friends.

[7] To secure the greatest possible accuracy he constructed a wooden outdoor quadrant some ten feet in radius, with a bra.s.s scale, thus permitting readings to a fraction of an inch.

[8] "The current view was that comets were formed by the ascending of human sins from the earth, that they were changed into a kind of gas, and ignited by the anger of G.o.d. This poisoned stuff then fell down on people's heads, causing all kinds of mischief, such as pestilence, sudden death, storms, etc." (Dryer, J. L. E., _Tycho Brahe_.)

[9] "For over fifty years he was the knight militant of science, and almost alone did successful battle with the hosts of Churchmen and Aristotelians who attacked him on all sides--one man against a world of bigotry and ignorance. If then... when face to face with the terrors of the Inquisition he, like Peter, denied his Master, no honest man, knowing all the circ.u.mstances, will be in a hurry to blame him." (Fahie, J. J., _Galileo, His Life and Work_.)

[10] See Routledge, R., _A Popular History of Science_, pp. 135-36, for a good digest of Bacon's inductive investigation, as a result of which he arrived at the conclusion that "Heat is an expansive bridled motion, struggling in the small particles of bodies."

[11] Bacon himself died a victim of one of his inductive experiments.

Wis.h.i.+ng to try out his theory that cold would prevent or r.e.t.a.r.d putrefaction, he killed a chicken, cleaned it, and packed it in snow. In so doing he contracted a cold which caused his death.

CHAPTER XVII

[1] See footnote 1, p. 272, on the origin of the term. Six years before the publication of the _Tractate_, Milton had visited Italy, and had been much entertained in Florence by members of the Academy and University there. In the _Tractate_ he outlined a plan for a series of cla.s.sical Academies for England, many of which were established. From England the term was carried to America, and became the name for a great development of semi-private secondary schools which flourished during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

[2] Unlike England and France, the German lands long remained feudal and not united. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century Germany was made up of more than three hundred little princ.i.p.alities, of which sixty were free cities. Each little princ.i.p.ality was self-governing and maintained its little court.

[3] Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), for forty-eight years a famous London Latin grammar-school master, often cla.s.sed as a precursor of the sense realists, in two books, published in 1581 and 1582, had urged the great importance of a study of the English tongue, and of using it as a medium for instruction. In his _Elementarie_ (1582) he had said: "Our own language bears the joyful t.i.tle of our liberty and freedom, the Latin remembers us of our thralldom and bondage. I love Rome, but London better; I favor Italy, but England more. I honor the Latin, but I wors.h.i.+p the English." (R. 226.)

[4] The school was opened with 433 boys and girls enrolled. It was divided into six cla.s.ses. In the first three German only was used. In the first two cla.s.ses the children were taught to read and write German, Genesis being the reading book of the second cla.s.s. In the third cla.s.s German grammar was studied. Music, religion, and the elements of arithmetic were also taught in these cla.s.ses. In the fourth cla.s.s Latin was begun, studying Terence, and Latin grammar was worked out from the constructions.

In the sixth and highest cla.s.s Greek was taught. A good education was to be given in six years, through the saving of time.

[5] This was written out in his native Czech tongue, but was not published at the time. A quarter of a century later it appeared in Latin, with his collected works, as published by his patron at Amsterdam (1657). It was then forgotten for two centuries. In 1841 the ma.n.u.script was found at Lissa, and published in the original at Prague, in 1848. The first English edition appeared in 1896.

[6] See the English edition edited by M. W. Keatinge, A. and C. Black, London, 1896.

[7] The following is ill.u.s.trative: "Sec. 518 (Geometria). Ex concursu linearum fit angulus qui est vel rectus, quern linea incidens perpendicularis efficit, ut est (in subjecto schemate) angulus A C B; vel acutus, minor recto, A ut B C D; vel obtusus, major recto, ut A C D."

[Ill.u.s.tration: B D | / |/ A------------- C]

[8] A very good reprint of the 1727 English edition, with pictures from the first edition of 1658, was brought out by C. W. Bardeen, of Syracuse, New York, in 1887. This ought to be in all libraries where the history of education is taught.

[9] Basedow's _Elementarwerk mit Kupfern_ (Elementary Reading Book, with copperplate pictures), published in 1773 (see p. 535), was the first attempt, and not a particularly successful one either, to improve on the _Orbis Pictus_.

[10] This term was at first applied in derision, just as Methodism was applied to the English religious reformers in the eighteenth century, but the term was soon made reputable by the earnestness and ability of those who accepted it.

[11] Francke's father had been counselor to Duke Ernest of Gotha, who had created for his little duchy the most modern-type school system of the seventeenth century. How much Francke's progressive ideas in educational matters go back to the work of Duke Ernest forms an interesting speculation.