Richard Mulcaster had 30 years of experience as an educator at St. Paul’s School and at the Merchant Taylors School, a Latin secondary school maintained by the tailors’ guild in London—and most famous of all the “guild schools.” Mulcaster was in favour of efficient teacher training and of teachers being adequately paid. In agreement with some of the Lutheran educational reforms, he felt that schools should be open to all, including women—who should, moreover, have access to higher education. He is particularly remembered for his opposition to Italianate trends: “I love Rome, but London better. I favour Italy, but England more. I know the Latin, but worship the English.”
Sir Francis Bacon was interested in education though it was not his main concern—his main concern being the championship of the scientific method and “sense” realism, or empiricism, in opposition to traditional Aristotelianism and Scholasticism. He was opposed to private tutors and felt that boys and youths were better off in schools and that their education should be geared to their social status and future activity. Schooling should aim at preparing statesmen and men of action as well as scholars and thus should include history, modern languages, and politics. Bacon himself had a passion for study not only for its utilitarian purposes but also because it was for him a true source of delight. The French Reformation
Schools in 16th-century France were still largely under the control of the Roman Catholic Church, as they had been in the Middle Ages. This traditional education faced opposition, however, both from Protestants and from reformers who had been influenced by the humanist principle of the primacy of the individual.
François Rabelais was a great and original interpreter of humanistic ideals, and his views on education reflected this. He himself studied in various fields, from medicine to letters, and was passionately interested in all of them. His controversy with the Sorbonne, a remaining stronghold of medievalism and Scholasticism, was bitter; he satirized the school and the useless notions taught there in his novels Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534).
Rabelais’s educational philosophy was entirely different from that of the medievalists—his being based on liberty of the pupil, in whom he had maximum faith. In Gargantua this cult of liberty was celebrated in the utopian Abbey of Thélème, where all could live according to their own pleasure but where the love of learning was so great that everyone was dedicated to it—getting much better results than those obtained at the medieval universities. And yet in the education of Gargantua and Pantagruel there were limits placed on liberty: Gargantua’s day started at 4 in the morning; he studied all subjects, both literary and scientific; and this was alternated with play and pleasing diversions. The heavy program, however, was not a constriction because of Gargantua’s delight in learning. The culture that Rabelais wanted for his two heroes was directly connected with the world in which they lived.
Gargantua and Pantagruel were perhaps among the first texts by a humanist in which not only the quadrivium but also scientific studies were enthusiastically proposed. There was nothing arid or abstract in Rabelais’s approach to nature, and in this context the classics also had a new flavour: ancient literature—no longer limited to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew but expanded to include Arabic and Chaldaic—could bring to light valuable knowledge that had been accumulated by the Classical world.
Petrus Ramus, one of the most bitter critics of French medieval Aristotelianism, was an intelligent reformer of educational methods. His best-known treatises are Aristotelicae animadversiones (1543; “Animadversions on Aristotle”) and Dialecticae partitiones (1543; “Divisions of Dialectic”), both condemned by royal decree; he also wrote two discourses on philosophy, Oratio de studiis philosophiae et eloquentiae conjungendis (1546; “Speech on Joining the Study of Philosophy with the Art of Speaking”) and Pro philosophica Parisiensis accademiae disciplina oratio (1551; “Speech in Defense of the Philosophical Discipline of the Parisian Academy”), as well as Ciceronianus, published posthumously. In these works, his criticism of traditional ways and of the degeneration of humanistic thought made him hated by all Roman Catholics, though not much better understood by Protestants; he died a Protestant victim of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His program of study was fairly close to the traditional one, but his method was original, for he was concerned that the teacher should not suffocate the child with too many lessons and considered the child’s autonomous activity important. He especially resented any pedagogy that relied on a blind appeal to authority; learning had to be utilitarian and issue from practice.
Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) was much influenced by his personal experience as a student. Though often critical of humanism, especially when it was misinterpreted and transformed into pedantic studies, he had great admiration for the classics and lacked the scientific interests of Rabelais or Ramus. Montaigne wrote specifically about education in two essays on the upbringing of children and on pedantry. Culture, he felt, had become imitation, often with no trace of originality left, whereas it should be a delight—not something a student is forced to assimilate but something to draw the student’s participation. He was in favour of instruction by tutors capable of giving the student individual attention—the ideal tutor being one with a good mind rather than one filled with pedantic notions. He also believed in the importance of physical education and in a boy’s being hardened to nature and to danger.
For Montaigne, it was important not only to travel to foreign countries but also to stay there for a while, to learn languages and, even more, to learn about foreign customs and thus break out of the narrow limits of one’s own province. There were many differences between Montaigne and Erasmus, but both were convinced that for the wise man there could be no geographic boundaries, for, through cultural diffusion, barriers would be broken down. The Calvinist Reformation
The Protestant reformer John Calvin was of French origin, but he settled in Geneva and made this Swiss city one of the most prominent centres of the Reformation. Unlike Luther, whose reforms were backed by princes hoping to gain greater political independence, Calvin was supported by the new mercantile class, which needed political and administrative changes for the purposes of its own expansion.
Calvin, JohnJohn Calvin.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: cph 3b19375)
Calvin considered popular education important, but he was not an innovator. The theological academy he founded in Geneva in 1559 was modeled on Sturm’s school in Strassburg, where Calvin had taught; it became distinguished under the directorship of Theodore Beza, an intelligent reformer but unfortunately a very intolerant one, at least in theological matters. Calvin’s influence on education was nevertheless felt in many of the European universities, even as far as England, where, in spite of Anglican opposition, the Puritans had gained a foothold.
Calvin was in favour of universal education under church control (the cost to be in large part borne by the community), but “universal” did not mean “democratic.” Even if some form of instruction was to be given to everyone (so that everyone might in some measure read the Scriptures for himself, in good Calvinist tradition), very few individuals reached secondary or higher education, and of these only a minute percentage came from the working classes. Documents of the period show the steps taken to achieve the aim of universal education. In the Netherlands, the Calvinist Synod of The Hague in 1586 made provision for setting up schools in the cities, and the Synod of Dort in 1618 decreed that free public schools should be set up in all villages. In Scotland in 1560, John Knox, a disciple of Calvin and the leader of the Scottish Presbyterians, aimed at setting up schools in every community, but the nobility prevented this from actually being carried out. The major educational contributions of Calvinism were its diffusion to a larger number of people and the development of Protestant education at the university level. Not only was Geneva significant but also the Universities of Leiden (1575), Amsterdam (1632), and Utrecht (1636) in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh (1582) in Scotland. The Puritan, or English Calvinist, movement was responsible for the founding of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge (1584). The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation