More famous than the schools of the Oratorians, though enjoying a briefer career, were the Little Schools of Port-Royal. Their founder was Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, better known as the abbot of Saint-Cyran, who was one of France’s chief advocates of Jansenism, a movement opposed to Jesuitry and Scholasticism and favouring bold reforms of the church and a turn to a certain Pietism. About 1635, Saint-Cyran, with the help of some wealthy, influential Parisians, succeeded in gaining control of the convent of Port-Royal, near Versailles. There the Jansenist group began about 1637 to educate a few boys, and by 1646 it had established the Little Schools of Port-Royal in Paris itself. Their curriculum was similar to that of the Oratorians, though excluding dancing, and was celebrated for its excellence in French language and logic and in foreign languages. Influenced by Descartes’s rationalistic philosophy, the Jansenists theorized that learning has a “natural” order and should begin with what is familiar to the child: thus, a phonetic system of teaching reading was used; all instruction was in French, not Latin; and student compositions were directed toward topics drawing on one’s own experiences or toward subjects in one’s current reading. Involved in political struggles with the Jesuits, who were still influential at court, the Jansenists were fated to have all their schools closed by 1660, but their theories and practices were widely adopted and became extremely influential. Female education
During the century, the education of girls was not entirely neglected, and France was notable for its efforts. Mme de Maintenon, for instance, had been a pupil of the Ursuline nuns in Paris and then a governess at the court of Louis XIV before she was wedded to the king in 1684. From her royal vantage point, she took upon herself the founding of a school in 1686 at Saint-Cyr near Versailles—a higher school principally for orphan girls descended from noble families. Besides such basic subjects as reading and writing, the girls were prepared for their future lives as wives and mothers or as members of genteel professions. In 1692 this school was taken over by the Augustinian nuns. Another important worker in the field of female education was St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who, together with her father confessor St. Francis de Sales, founded in 1610 the order of the Visitandines, a group dedicated to charitable work and the religious education of women.
Madame de Maintenon, detail of a portrait by Pierre Mignard; in the Louvre, ParisGiraudon—Art Resource/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai and noted theologian and writer, is especially known for his views on the education of girls. In his Traité de l’éducation des filles (1687; “Treatise on the Education of Girls”), he remarked on the importance of women in improving the morals of society and went on to express his thoughts about girls’ education. Because girls, he believed, are meant to fulfill roles as housewives and mothers, they should pursue religious and moral education rather than scholarly learning. They should learn reading and writing, basic mathematics, history, music, needlework, and Latin (because it is the church language)—but no modern languages, since they tend to moral corruption. Education, he maintained, should make the lady of the house both Christian and accomplished, neither ignorant nor précieuse. English theories and practices
The 17th century in England (up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89) was one of argument over religious and political settlements bequeathed by Queen Elizabeth I; the period was one characterized by the confrontation of two different worldviews—on one side the royalist Cavaliers and on the other side the Puritans. The division was reflected in education. The Puritan reformers
In the Anglo-American world the Reformation came about in the form of Calvinism—“Puritan” being the derisory name for strict Calvinists. Their ideals were sober, practical behaviour, careful management, thrift, asceticism, and the rejection of hedonistic pleasures of life. Many of the educationists who sought this Puritan ideal were followers of the reform plans of Comenius. Samuel Hartlib, a Polish merchant residing in England who was friend, publisher, and patron of Comenius, tried to interest Parliament in the idea of popular education; his treatise London’s Charity Enlarged (1650) proposed that a grant be made for the education of poor children, all in the interest of general social betterment. The Committee for Advancement of Learning, which he founded in 1653, was the impulse and model for later educational associations. In general, his ideas for reform included the introduction of agricultural schools and the state organization of the educational system, as well as the establishment of general elementary education.
The name of John Dury stands close to those of Comenius and Hartlib. In his book The Reformed School (1651), he proposed teaching societies in England much like the teaching congregations in France. Indeed, he was particularly insistent that control of education be in the hands not of a regimentizing state but of free educational organizations. He was also concerned about teaching youth the useful arts and sciences so that they might “become profitable instruments of the Commonwealth.” From him, too, stemmed the draft of a nursery school; thus, he can be regarded as the first representative of infant teaching in England.
The most renowned of the Puritan intellectuals, John Milton, was more concerned with the education of “our nobler and our gentler youth” than with the education of common boys. Of Education (1644), written at the request of Hartlib, was one of the last in the long line of European expositions of Renaissance humanism. Milton’s aim was the traditional one: the molding of boys into enlightened, cultivated, responsible citizens and leaders. His proposed academy, which would take the place of both secondary school and college, was to concentrate on instruction in the ancient classics, with due subordination to the Bible and Christian teaching. Milton also emphasized the sciences, and physical and martial exercise had a place in his curriculum as well. Royalist education
Frequently opposed to Puritanism on educational as well as political grounds were the royalists and supporters of the nobility. In education, their views went back to Sir Thomas Elyot and Roger Ascham in the 16th century, who had written so persuasively about the education of gentlemen in the tradition of the so-called courtesy books. Influenced by these few English forerunners and also by Montaigne were James Cleland (The Institution of a Young Nobleman, 1607) and Henry Peacham (The Compleat Gentleman, 1622). In the view of the latter, an extreme royalist, “Fashioning him [the pupil] absolute in the most necessary and commendable Qualities concerning Minde and Body to country’s glory” was the overriding aim of education; the table of contents of The Compleat Gentleman exhibits the variety of interests of an ideal gentleman or noble—cosmography, geometry, poetry, music, sculpture, drawing, painting, heraldry, and so on. John Gailhard (The Compleat Gentleman, 1678), another writer in the same tradition, can be said to have anticipated John Locke’s empiricism (see below John Locke’s empiricism and education as conduct) when he wrote that “the nature of Youth is like Wax by fire, or a smooth table upon which anything can be written.” The academies
The beginning of academies for the promotion of philosophy, arts, or sciences can be traced to the early Renaissance, particularly in Italy and France. The Platonic Academy in Florence was one of the most noted of speculative societies. The first scientific academies belong to the 16th century: in 1560, for instance, the Academia Secretorum Naturae (“Secret Academy of Nature”) was founded in Naples; in 1575 Philip II of Spain founded in Madrid the Academy of Mathematical Sciences. Then, in 1617, the first German academy, Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (“Productive Society”), was founded at Weimar with the expressed purposes of the purification of the language and the cultivation of literature. A number of other academies were founded throughout Europe.