The History of Education Part 16

The validity of any statement, the actuality of any alleged instance, came to be determined, not by any application of rationalistic principle, not by inherent plausibility, not by actual inquiry into the facts of the case, but by its agreement with religious feelings or beliefs, its effect in furthering the influence of the Church or the reputation of a saint--in general, by its relationship to matters of faith. Thus it happens that the chronicles of the monks and the lives of the saints, charming and interesting as they are in their navete, their simplicity, their trustful credulity, and their pictures of a life and an att.i.tude of mind so remote from ours, are filled with incidents given as facts that test the greatest faith, strain the most vivid imagination, and shock that innate respect for reality, that it is the purpose of modern education to inculcate. [23]

This authoritative and repressive att.i.tude of the Church expressed itself in many ways. The teaching of the period is an excellent example of this influence. The instruction in the so-called Seven Liberal Arts remained unchanged throughout a period of half a dozen centuries--so much acc.u.mulated knowledge pa.s.sed on as a legacy to succeeding generations. It represented mere instruction; not education. As a recent writer has well expressed it, the whole knowledge and culture contained in the Seven Liberal Arts remained "like a substance in suspension in a medium incapable of absorbing it; unchanged throughout the whole mediaeval period." Inquiry or doubt in religious matters was not tolerated, and scientific inquiry and investigation ceased to exist. The notable scientific advances of the Greeks, their literature and philosophy, and particularly their genius for free inquiry and investigation, no longer influenced a world dominated by an inst.i.tution preparing its children only for life in a world to come. Not until the world could shake off this mediaeval att.i.tude toward scientific inquiry and make possible honest doubt was any real intellectual progress possible. In a rough, general way the turn in the tide came about the beginning of the twelfth century, and for the next five centuries the Church was increasingly busy trying, like King Canute of old, to stop the waves of free inquiry and scientific doubt from rising higher against the bulwarks it had erected.

THE MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. The educational system which the Church had developed by 1200 continued unchanged in its essential features until after the great awakening known as the Revival of Learning, or Renaissance. This system we have just sketched. For instruction in the elements of learning we have the inner and outer monastery and convent schools, and, in connection with the churches, song schools, and chantry or stipendary schools. In these last we have the beginnings of the parish school for instruction in the elements of learning and the fundamentals of faith for the children of the faithful. In the monasteries, convents, and in connection with the cathedral churches we have the secondary instruction fairly well organized with the _Trivium_ and the _Quadrivium_ as the basis. At the close of the period under consideration in this chapter a few privately endowed grammar schools were just beginning to be founded to supplement the work of the cathedral schools (RS. 141-143). In some of the inner monastery schools and a few of the cathedral schools we also have the beginnings of higher instruction, with theology as the one professional subject and the one learned career.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50. EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES The relative weight of the lines indicates approximate development. The lines along which educational evolution took place in the later Middle Ages are here clearly marked out.]

All these schools, too, were completely under the control of the Church.

There were no private schools or teachers before about 1200. Only the chivalric education was under the control of princes or kings, and even this the Church kept under its supervision. The Church was still the State, to a large degree, and the Church, unlike Greece or Rome, took the education of the young upon itself as one of its most important functions.

The schools taught what the Church approved, and the instruction was for religious and church ends. The monks who gave instruction in the monasteries were responsible to the Abbot, who was in turn responsible to the head of the order and through him to the Pope at Rome. Similarly the _scholasticus_ in the cathedral school and the _precentor_ in the song school were both responsible to the Bishop, and again through Archbishop and Cardinal to the Pope.

THE FIRST TEACHER'S CERTIFICATES AND SCHOOL SUPERVISION. Toward the latter part of the period under consideration in this chapter an interesting development in church school administration took place. As the cathedral and song schools increased a.s.sistant teachers were needed, and the _scholasticus_ and _precentor_ gradually withdrew from instruction and became the supervisors of instruction, or rather the princ.i.p.als of their respective schools. As song or parish schools were established in the parishes of the diocese teachers for these were needed, and the _scholasticus_ and _precentor_ extended their authority and supervision over these, just as the Bishop had done much earlier (p. 97) over the training and appointment of priests. By 1150 we have, clearly evolved, the system of central supervision of the training of all teachers in the diocese through the issuing, for the first time in Europe, of licenses to teach (R. 83). The system was finally put into legal form by a decree adopted by a general council of the Church at Rome, in 1179, which required that the _scholasticus_ "should have authority to superintend all the schoolmasters of the diocese and grant them licenses without which none should presume to teach," and that "nothing be exacted for licenses to teach" issued by him, thus stopping the charging of fees for their issuance. The _precentor_, in a similar manner, claimed and often secured supervision of all elementary, and especially all song-school instruction.

Teachers were also required to take an oath of fealty and obedience (R. 84 b).

As a result of centuries of evolution we thus find, by 1200, a limited but powerful church school system, with centralized control and supervision of instruction, diocesan licenses to teach, and a curriculum adapted to the needs of the inst.i.tution in control of the schools. We also note the beginnings of secular instruction in the training of the n.o.bility for life's service, though even this is approved and sanctioned by the Church.

The centralized religious control thus established continued until the nineteenth century, and still exists to a more or less important degree in the school systems of Italy, the old Austro-Hungarian States, Germany, England, and some other western nations. As we shall see later on, one of the big battles in the process of developing state school systems has come through the attempt of the State to subst.i.tute its own organization for this religious monopoly of instruction.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Outline the instruction in an inner monastery school.

2. Show how the mediaeval parish school naturally developed as an offshoot of the cathedral schools, and was supplemented later by the endowed chantry schools.

3. What effect did the development of song-school instruction have on the instruction in the cathedral schools?

4. Why was it difficult to develop good cathedral schools during the early Middle Ages?

5. About how much training would be represented to-day by the Seven Liberal Arts, (_a_) a.s.suming the body of knowledge then known? (_b_) a.s.suming the body of knowledge for each subject known to-day?

6. What great subject of study has been developed out of one part of the study of mediaeval rhetoric?

7. Why would dialectic naturally not be of much importance, so long as instruction in theology was dogmatic and not a matter of thinking?

8. Characterize the instruction in arithmetic, geometry, and geography during the early Middle Ages. Would we consider such knowledge as of any value? Explain the attention given to such instruction.

9. What great modern subjects of study have been developed out of the mediaeval subjects of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy?

10. Compare the knowledge of mediaevals and moderns in (a) geography, (b) astronomy.

11. What does the fact that the few great textbooks were in use for so many centuries indicate as to the character of educational progress during the Middle Ages?

12. Was the Church wise in adopting and sanctifying the education of chivalry? Why?

13. What important contributions to world progress came out of chivalric education?

14. What ideals and practices from chivalry have been retained and are still in use to-day? Does the Boy Scouts movement embody any of the chivalric ideas and training?

15. Compare the education of the body by the Greeks and under chivalry.

16. Compare the Athenian ephebic oath with the vows of chivalry.

17. Picture the present world transferred back to a time when theology was the one profession.

18. What educational theory, conscious or unconscious, formed the basis for mediaeval education and instruction?

19. Explain why the Church, after six or seven centuries of effort, still provided schools only for preparation for its own service.

20. What does the lack of independent scholars during the Middle Ages indicate as to possible leisure?

21. Was the att.i.tude of Anselm a perfectly natural one for the Middle Ages? Can progress be made with such an att.i.tude dominant?

22. Contrast the deadly sins of the Middle Ages with present-day conceptions as to education.

23. Contrast the purposes of mediaeval education and the education of to- day.

24. When Greece and Rome offered no precedents, how did the Church come to so fully develop and control the education which was provided?

25. Compare the supervisory work of a modern county superintendent with that of a _scholasticus_ of a mediaeval cathedral.

SELECTED READINGS

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

70. Leach: Song and Grammar Schools in England.

71. Mullinger: The Episcopal and Monastic Schools.

72. Statutes: The School at Salisbury Cathedral.

73. Aldwincle: Foundation Grant for a Chantry School.

74. Maurus: The Seven Liberal Arts.

75. Leach: A Mediaeval Latin Colloquy.

76. Quintilian: On the Importance of the Study of Grammar.

77. Anglicus: The Elements, and the Planets.

(a) Of the Elements.

(b) Of Double Moving of the Planets.

78. Cott: A Tenth Century Schoolmaster's Books.

79. Archbishop of Cologne: The Truce of G.o.d.

80. Gautier: How the Church used Chivalry.

81. Draper: Educational Influences of the Church Services.

82. Winchester Diocesan Council: How the Church urged that the Elements of Religious Education be given.

83. Lincoln Cathedral: Licenses required to teach Song.

84. English Forms: Appointment and Oath of a Grammar-School Master.

(a) Northallerton: Appointment of a master of Song and Grammar.

(b) Archdeacon of Ely: Oath of a Grammar-School Master to.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS