The History of Education Part 31

The English Act of Supremacy (R. 153), which severed England from Rome, had been pa.s.sed by parliament in 1534. In 1536 an English Bible was issued to the churches, [12] the services were ordered conducted in English, and in 1549 the English Prayer Book, Psalter, and Catechism were put into use.

In 1538 the English Bible was ordered chained in the churches, [13] that the people might read it (R. 170), and the people were ordered instructed in English in the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. The change of the service to English was perhaps the largest educational gain the ma.s.ses of the people obtained as the result of the Reformation in England. [14]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 97. A CHAINED BIBLE (Redrawn from an old print showing a chained Bible in a church in York, England)]

SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES AND THE FOUNDING OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.

Between 1536 and 1539 the most striking result of the Reformation in England took place,--the dissolution of the monasteries. Their doubtful reputation enabled Henry and Parliament to confiscate their property, and "the dead hand of monasticism was removed from a third of the lands of England." There were precedents for this in pre-Reformation times, the church authorities themselves having converted several monastic foundations into grammar schools. At one blow Parliament now suppressed the monasteries of all England, some eight thousand monks and nuns were driven out, many of the monasteries, nunneries, and abbey churches were destroyed, and the monastic lands were forfeited to the Crown. It was a ruthless proceeding, though in the long course of history beneficial to the nation. Much of the land was given to influential followers of the king in return for their support, and a large part of the proceeds from sales was spent on coast defenses and a navy, though more than was formerly thought to be the case was used in refounding grammar schools. A number of the monasteries were converted into collegiate churches, with schools attached. Some of the alms-houses and hospitals confiscated at the same time were similarly used, and the cathedral churches in nine English cities were taken from the monks (R. 171), who had driven out the regular clergy during the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and were refounded as cathedral church schools. The cathedral church school at Canterbury, which Henry refounded in 1541 as a humanistic grammar school, with a song school attached, and for the government of which he made detailed provisions (R.

172), is typical of a school which had fallen into bad repute (R. 171), and was later refounded as a result of the confiscation of the monastic property. The College of Christ Church at Oxford, and Trinity College at Cambridge, were also richly endowed from the monastic proceeds.

In 1546 another Act of Parliament vested the t.i.tle of all chantry foundations, some two hundred in number, in the Crown that they might be "altered, changed, and amended to convert them to good and G.o.dly uses as in the erecting of grammar schools," but so pressing became the royal need for money that, after their sale, the intended endowments were never made.

As the song schools had been established originally to train a few boys "to help a priest sing ma.s.s," and as the service was now to be read rather than sung, the need for choristers largely disappeared. Being regarded as nurseries of superst.i.tion, they were abandoned without regret.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 7. THE FREE SCHOOL AT HARROW One of the "Great Public" Grammar Schools of England. Founded in 1571, in the reign of Elizabeth; building finished in 1593. The names of famous "old boys" are seen lettered on the wall at the back. Pupils are seen seated in "forms," reciting to the masters. (From a picture published by Ackermann, in his ill.u.s.trated _History of the Colleges of Winchester, Eton, Westminster_, etc. London, 1816.)]

RESULT OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. The result of the change in religious allegiance in England was a material decrease in the number of places offering grammar-school advantages, though with a material improvement in the quality of the instruction provided, and a consequent decrease in the number of boys given free education in the refounded grammar schools. As for elementary education, the abolition of the song, chantry, and hospital schools took away most of the elementary schools which had once existed. The clerk of the parish usually replaced them by teaching a certain number of boys "to read English intelligently instead of Latin unintelligently," many new parish elementary schools were created, especially during the reign of Elizabeth, and in time the dame school, the charity school, the writing school, and apprenticeship training arose (chapter XVIII) and became regular English inst.i.tutions.

These types of schooling const.i.tuted almost all the elementary-school advantages provided in England until well into the eighteenth century.

The post-Reformation educational energy of England was given to the founding of grammar schools, and during the century and a half before the outbreak of the struggle with James II (1688) to put an end in England for all time to the late-mediaeval theory of the divine right of kings, a total of 558 grammar schools were founded or refounded. [15]

The grammar schools thus founded were, one and all, grammar schools of the reformed humanistic type. What was to be taught in them was seldom mentioned in the foundation articles, as it was a.s.sumed that every one knew what a grammar school was, so well by this time had the humanistic type become established. They were one and all modeled after the instruction first provided in Saint Paul's School (p. 275) in London, and such modifications as had been sanctioned with time, and this continued to be the type of English secondary school instruction until well into the nineteenth century.

THE DOMINATING RELIGIOUS PURPOSE. The religious conflicts following the reformation movement everywhere intensified religious prejudices and stimulated religious bigotry. This was soon reflected in the schools of all lands. In England, after the restoration under Catholic Mary (1553-58) and the final reestablishment of the English Church under Elizabeth (1558), all school instruction became narrowly religious and English Protestant in type. By the middle of the seventeenth century the grammar schools had become nurseries of the faith, as well as very formal and disciplinary in character. In England, perhaps more than in any other Protestant country, Christianity came to be identified with a strict conformity to the teachings and practices of the Established Church, and to teach that particular faith became one of the particular missions of all types of schools. Bishops were instructed to hunt out schoolmasters who were unsound in the faith (R. 164 a), and teachers were deprived of their positions for nonconformity (R. 164 b). More effectively to handle the problem a series of laws were enacted, the result of which was to inst.i.tute such an inquisitorial policy that the position of schoolmaster became almost intolerable. In 1580 a law (R. 165) imposed a fine of 10 on any one employing a schoolmaster of unsound faith, with disability and imprisonment for the schoolmaster so offending; in 1603 another law required a license from the bishop on the part of all schoolmasters as a condition precedent to teaching; in 1662 the obnoxious Act of Uniformity (R. 166) required every schoolmaster in any type of school, and all private tutors, to subscribe to a declaration that they would conform to the liturgy of the Church, as established by law, with fine and imprisonment for breaking the law; in 1665 the so-called "Five-Mile Act"

forbade Dissenters to teach in any school, under penalty of a fine of 40; and in that same year bishops were instructed to see that

the said schoolmasters, ushers, schoolmistresses, and instructors, or teachers of youth, publicly or privately, do themselves frequent the public prayers of the Church, and cause their scholars to do the same; and whether they appear well affected to the Government of his Majesty, and the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.

This att.i.tude also extended upward to the universities as well, where nonconformists were prohibited by law (1558) from receiving degrees, a condition not remedied until 1871 (R. 305). The great purpose of instruction came to be to support the authority and the rule of the Established Church, and the almost complete purpose of elementary instruction came to be to train pupils to read the Catechism, the Prayer Book, and the Bible. This intense religious att.i.tude in England was reflected in early colonial America, as we shall see in a following chapter.

THE POOR-LAW LEGISLATION, AND ITS EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE. After the thirteenth century, due in part to the rise of the wool industry in Flanders, England began to change from a farming to a sheep-raising country. Accompanying this decline in the importance of farming there had been a slow but gradual growth of trade and manufacturing in the cities, and to the cities the surplus of rural peasantry began to drift. The cost of living also increased rapidly after the fifteenth century. As a result there was a marked shifting of occupations, much unemployment, and a constantly increasing number of persons in need of poor-relief. In the time of Elizabeth (1558-1603) it has been estimated that one half the population of England did not have an income sufficient for sustenance, and great numbers of children were running about without proper food or care, and growing up in idleness and vice.

The situation, which had been growing worse for two centuries, culminated at the time of the Reformation when the religious houses, which had previously provided alms, were confiscated as a result of the reformation activities. The groundwork of the old system of religious charity was thus swept away, and the relation which had for so long existed between prayer and penance and almsgiving and charity was altered. The nation was thus forced to deal with the problem of poor-relief, and with the care of the children of the poor. In the place of the old system the people were forced, by circ.u.mstances, to develop a new conception of the State as a community of peoples bound together by community interest, good feeling, charity, and service.

As this new conception dawned on the English people, a series of laws were enacted which attempted to provide for the situation which had been created. These were progressive in character, and ranged over much of the sixteenth century. First the poor were restricted from begging, outside of certain specified limits. Next church collections and parish support for the poor were ordered (1553), and the people were to be urged to give.

Then workhouses for the poor and their children, and materials with which to work, were ordered provided, and those persons of means who would not give freely were to be cited before the bishop first (R. 173), and the justices later, and if necessary forcibly a.s.sessed (1563). The next step was to permit the local authorities to raise needed funds by strictly local taxation (1572). In 1601 the last step was taken, when the compulsory taxation of all persons of property was ordered to provide the necessary poor-relief, and the excessive burdens of one parish were to be shared by neighboring parishes. Thus, after a long period of slowly evolving legislation (R. 173), the English Poor-Law of 1601 (R. 174) finally gave expression to the following principles:

1. The compulsory care of the poor, as an obligation of the State.

2. The compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, male and female, to learn a useful trade.

3. The obligation of the master to train his apprentices in a trade.

4. The obligation of the overseers of the poor to supply, where necessary, the opportunity and the materials for such training of the children of the poor.

5. The compulsory taxation of all persons of property to provide the necessary funds for such a purpose, and without reference to any benefits derived from the taxation.

6. The excessive burdens of any one parish to be pooled throughout the hundred or county.

In this compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, with the obligation imposed that such children must be trained in a trade and in proper living, with general taxation of those of property to provide workhouses and materials for such a purpose, we have the germ, among English-speaking peoples, of the idea of the general taxation of all persons by the State to provide schools for the children of the State. The apprenticing of the children of the poor to labor and the requirement that they be taught the elements of religion soon became a fixed English practice (R. 217), and in the seventeenth century this idea was carried to the American colonies and firmly established there. It was on the foundations of the English Poor-Law of 1601, above stated, that the first Ma.s.sachusetts law relating to the schooling of all children (1642) was framed (R. 190), but with the significant Calvinistic addition that:

7. "In euery towne ye chosen men" shall see that parents and masters not only train their children in learning and labor, but also "to read & understand the principles of religion & the capitall lawes of this country," with power to impose fines on such as refuse to render accounts concerning their children.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is progress that is substantial nearly always a product of slow rather than rapid evolution?

2. Show why the evolution of many Protestant sects was a natural consequence of the position a.s.sumed by Luther. What is the ultimate outcome of the process?

3. Why was it not important that more than a few be educated under the older theory of salvation?

4. Show how modern democratic government was a natural consequence of the Protestant position.

5. Why was universal education involved as a later but ultimate consequence of the position taken by the Protestants?

6. Explain why the local Church authorities, before 1520, tried so hard to prevent the establishment of vernacular schools.

7. Explain why the religious discussions of the Reformation should have so strongly stimulated a desire to read.

8. Explain the fixing in character of the German, French, and English languages by a single book. What had fixed the Italian?

9. Was Luther probably right when he wrote, in 1524, that the schools "were deteriorating throughout Germany"? Why?

10. Give reasons why Luther's appeals for schools were not more fruitful.

11. What was the significance of the position of Luther for the future education of girls?

12. Was Luther's idea that a clergyman should have had some experience as a teacher a good one, or not? Why?

13. How do you explain Luther's ideas as to coupling up elementary and trade education in his primary schools?

14. Point out the similarity of Luther's scheme for a school system with the German school system as finally evolved (Figure 96).

15. Show how Melanchthon's Saxony Plan differed from Luther's ideas. For the times was it a more practical plan? Why?

16. Explain why the Lutheran idea of personal responsibility for salvation made so little headway in England, and show that the natural educational consequences of this resulted.

17. Show what different conditions were likely to follow, in later centuries, from the different stands taken as to the relation of the State and Church to education by the German people by the middle of the sixteenth century, and by the English at the time of Elizabeth.

18. Compare the origin of the vernacular elementary-school teacher in Germany and England.

19. Leach estimates that, in 1546, there were approximately three hundred grammar schools in England for a total population of approximately two and one half millions. About what opportunities for grammar-school education did this afford?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

154. Rashdall: Diffusion of Education in Mediaeval Times.

155. Times: The Vernacular Style of the Translation of the Bible.

156. Luther: To the Mayors and Magistrates of Germany.