Luther specifically wished his humble social origins to be considered a title of nobility. He wanted to create educational institutions that would be open to the sons of peasants and miners, though this did not mean giving them political representation. (The German princes were glad to promote the Reformation on condition that it would not diminish but would, on the contrary, increase their political power.) Luther realized that an educational system open to the masses would have to be public and financed by citizens’ councils. His educational programs were set out in An die Radsherrn aller Stedte deütsches Lands: Das sie christliche Schulen affrichten und hallten sollen (1524; “Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of All the Cities in Behalf of Christian Schools”), in Dass man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle (1530; “Discourse on the Duty of Sending Children to School”), and in various letters to German princes.
Although Luther advocated the study of Classical languages, he believed that the primary purpose of such an education—in marked distinction to the aims of the humanists—was to promote piety through the reading of the Scriptures in their pure form. “Neglect of education,” Luther wrote in a letter to Jacob Strauss in 1524, “will bring the greatest ruin to the Gospel.” Accordingly, Luther argued that education must be extended to all children—girls as well as boys—and not simply to a leisured minority as in Renaissance Italy. Even those children who had to work for their parents in trade or in the fields should be enabled, if only for a few hours a day, to attend local, city-maintained schools in order to promote their reading skills and, hence, piety. Out of the Lutheran argument emerged a new educational concept, the pietas litterata: literacy to promote piety.
On the premise that a new class of cultivated men must be developed to substitute for the dispossessed monks and priests, new schools, whose upkeep was the responsibility of the princes and the cities, were soon organized along the lines suggested by Luther. In 1543 Maurice of Saxony founded three schools open to the public, supported by estates from the dissolved monasteries. It was more difficult to set up the city schools, for which there was no tradition. In towns and villages of northern Germany, Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558) set up the earliest schools to teach religion and reading and writing in German, but it was not until 1559 that the public ordinances of Württemberg made explicit reference to German schools in the villages. This example was shortly followed in Saxony.
Whereas Luther combined his interest in education with his work as a religious reformer and politician, another reformer, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), concentrated almost entirely on education, creating a new educational system and in particular setting up a secondary-school system. He taught for many years at the University of Wittenberg, which became one of the centres of theological studies in Reformation Germany; and his experience there enabled him to reorganize the old universities and set up new ones, such as Marburg, Königsberg, and Jena. His ideas about secondary education were put into practice in the schools he founded at Eisleben. Scholastic work was divided into three stages, access to each successive stage depending on the ability of the student to master the previous course work; this was a new concept (foretelling the later “grading system”), unknown in the traditional scholastic system. He was convinced that too many subjects should not be imposed on the student. He felt that Latin was important but not German, Greek, or Hebrew, as had been taught in the humanistic schools; such variety, he felt, was exhausting and possibly harmful. This opened the door to a new type of formalism, however, a danger that in other spheres the educational reformers had tried to fight.
The work of Johannes Sturm (1507–89) illustrates this danger. He founded a grammar school in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France) that became a model for German schools. Sturm believed that methods of instruction in elementary schools and, to some degree, in secondary schools should be different from those in the institutes of higher education. Not much autonomy was to be allowed the child, who started learning Latin at the age of six by memorizing. Sturm’s love of Latin was even greater than that of his friend Erasmus, who never wanted it to become a mechanical exercise. As a consequence, German was neglected—as was physical instruction—and too much importance was given to form and expression for its own sake. The English Reformation
The separation of the Church of England from the church of Rome in the 16th century under Henry VIII did not have quite the repercussions in the scholastic field that were experienced by the Continental reformations. The secondary-school system in England had been strongly influenced by the Renaissance in the period preceding the reform, and about 300 grammar schools were already in existence. Nevertheless, the situation became precarious, for political reasons, under a succession of sovereigns.
Henry VIII included the schools in his policy of concentration and consolidation of power in the hands of the state. In 1548, under Henry’s son Edward VI, the Chantries Act was passed, confiscating the estates of the church expressly for use in education; but the turmoil of the times, under the boy Edward and then his Roman Catholic sister Mary I, allowed the funds allocated to education to be diverted elsewhere. Many primary schools and grammar schools disappeared or retrenched their operations for lack of funds. Elizabeth I, however, succeeding to the throne in 1558, revived Henry VIII’s educational policy; considerable sums were appropriated for education, even though it was not always possible to enforce the new provisions because of local opposition and some lack of concern on the part of the Anglican clergy.
The growth of a rich and prosperous mercantile class and the spread of Calvinist reforms through the Puritans in England and the Presbyterians in Scotland were also factors in the transformation of English education in the 16th and 17th centuries. Scholastic programs reflected changes in society: importance was given to English, to science, to modern languages (in particular French and Italian), and to sports, as is still the case in England today. The Puritan contribution was thus considerable, though often hindered by the traditional forces of the Anglican church and the old nobility.
Sir Thomas Elyot, in The Boke Named the Governour (1531), wrote the first treatise in English that dealt specifically with education. He was interested in those who would have the future economic and political power in their hands. Though their education was to include the classics, it was to be supplemented by the needs of the new mercantile class—the national English language, manual arts, drawing, music, and all forms of sport. Elyot was obviously influenced by Erasmus.
Roger Ascham was close in thought to many of the English humanists. In The Scholemaster (1570) he underlined the importance of the English language (in spite of his being a professor of Greek) and proposed that it should be used in teaching the Classical languages. He also believed that physical exercise and sport were important, not only for the nobility and the leisured classes but also for students and teachers. He was aware of the social changes in the country; and, observing with sadness the corruption of the new wealth, he was particularly chagrined to see students going to university not to gain culture but to prepare themselves for high offices of state.