Chapter CIX: Section 2 (14)

"When learning began to revive after the long sleep of the
Middle Ages, Italy experienced the first impulse. Next came
Germany and the contiguous provinces of the Low Countries. The
force of the movement in these regions is shown by an event of
great importance, not always noticed by historians. In 1400,
there was established at Deventer, in the northeastern
province of the Netherlands, an association or brotherhood,
usually called Brethren of the Life in Common [see BRETHREN OF
THE COMMON LOT]. In their strict lives, partial community of
goods, industry in manual labor, fervent devotion, and
tendency to mysticism, they bore some resemblance to the
modern Moravians. But they were strikingly distinguished from
the members of this sect by their earnest cultivation of
knowledge, which was encouraged among themselves and promoted
among others by schools, both for primary and advanced
education. In 1430, the Brethren had established forty-five
branches, and by 1460 more than thrice that number. They were
scattered through different parts of Germany and the Low
Countries, each with its school subordinate to the head
college at Deventer. It was in these schools, in the middle of
the fifteenth century, that a few Germans and Netherlanders
were, as Hallam says, roused to acquire that extensive
knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet
exclusively possessed. Their names should never be omitted in
any remembrance of the revival of letters; for great was their
influence upon subsequent times. Chief among these men were
Wessels, of Groningen, 'one of those who contributed most
steadily to the purification of religion'; Hegius of Deventer,
under whom Erasmus obtained his early education, and who
probably was the first man to print Greek north of the Alps;
Dringeberg, who founded a good school in Alsace; and Longius,
who presided over one at Munster. Thanks to the influence of
these pioneers in learning, education had made great progress
among the Netherlanders by the middle of the sixteenth
century. … We have the testimony of the Italian Guicciardini
to the fact that before the outbreak of the war with Spain
even the peasants in Holland could read and write well. As the
war went on, the people showed their determination that in
this matter there should be no retrogression. In the first
Synod of Dort, held in 1574, the clergy expressed their
opinion upon the subject by passing a resolution or ordinance
which, among other things, directed 'the servants of the
Church' to obtain from the magistrates in every locality a
permission for the appointment of schoolmasters, and an order
for their compensation as in the past.
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Before many years had elapsed the civil authorities began to
establish a general school system for the country. In 1582,
the Estates of Friesland decreed that the inhabitants of towns
and villages should, within the space of six weeks, provide
good and able Reformed schoolmasters, and those who neglected
so to do would be compelled to accept the instructors
appointed for them. This seems to have been the beginning of
the supervision of education by the State, a system which soon
spread over the whole republic. In these schools, however,
although they were fostered by the State, the teachers seem,
in the main, to have been paid by their pupils. But as years
went on, a change came about in this part of the system. It
probably was aided by the noteworthy letter which John of
Nassau, the oldest brother of William the Silent, the noble
veteran who lived until 1606, wrote to his son Lewis William,
Stadtholder of Friesland. In this letter, which is worthy of a
place on the walls of every schoolhouse in America, the
gallant young stadt-holder is instructed to urge on the
States-General 'that they, according to the example of the
pope and Jesuits, should establish free schools, where
children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very
small sum, could be well and christianly educated and brought
up. This would be the greatest and most useful work, and the
highest service that you could ever accomplish for God and
Christianity, and especially for the Netherlands themselves.
… In summa, one may jeer at this as popish trickery, and
undervalue it as one will: there still remains in the work an
inexpressible benefit. Soldiers and patriots thus educated,
with a true knowledge of God and a Christian conscience, item,
churches and schools, good libraries, books, and
printing-presses, are better than all armies, arsenals,
armories, munitions, alliances, and treaties that can be had
or imagined in the world.' Such were the words in which the
Patriarch of the Nassaus urged upon his countrymen a
common-school system. In 1609, when the Pilgrim Fathers took
up their residence in Leyden, the school had become the common
property of the people, and was paid for among other municipal
expenses. It was a land of schools supported by the State—a
land, according to Motley, 'where every child went to school,
where almost every individual inhabitant could write and read,
where even the middle classes were proficient in mathematics
and the classics, and could speak two or more modern
languages.' Does any reader now ask whence the settlers of
Plymouth, who came directly from Holland, and the other
settlers of New England whose Puritan brethren were to be
found in thousands throughout the Dutch Republic, derived
their ideas of schools first directed, and then supported by
the State."

EDUCATION:
Leyden University.

To commemorate the deliverance of Leyden from the Spanish
siege in 1574 (see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1573-1574), "and as a
reward for the heroism of the citizens, the Prince of Orange,
with the consent of the Estates of the province, founded the
University of Leyden. Still, the figment of allegiance
remained; the people were only fighting for their
constitutional rights, and so were doing their duty to the
sovereign. Hence the charter of the university ran in the name
of Philip, who was credited with its foundation, as a reward
to his subjects for their rebellion against his evil
counsellors and servants, 'especially in consideration of the
differences of religion, and the great burdens and hardships
borne by the citizens of our city of Leyden during the war
with such faithfulness.' Motley calls this 'ponderous irony,'
but the Hollanders were able lawyers and intended to build on
a legal basis. This event marks an epoch in the intellectual
history of Holland and of the world. … The new university
was opened in 1575, and from the outset took the highest rank.
Speaking, a few years ago, of its famous senate chamber,
Niebuhr called it 'the most memorable room of Europe in the
history of learning.' The first curator was John Van der Does,
who had been military commandant of the city during the siege.
He was of a distinguished family, but was still more
distinguished for his learning, his poetical genius, and his
valor. Endowed with ample funds, the university largely owed
its marked pre-eminence to the intelligent foresight and wise
munificence of its curators. They sought out and obtained the
most distinguished scholars of all nations, and to this end
spared neither pains nor expense. Diplomatic negotiation and
even princely mediation were often called in for the
acquisition of a professor. Hence it was said that it
surpassed all the universities of Europe in the number of its
scholars of renown. These scholars were treated with princely
honors. … The 'mechanicals' of Holland, as Elizabeth called
them, may not have paid the accustomed worship to rank, but to
genius and learning they were always willing to do homage.
Space would fail for even a brief account of the great men,
foreign and native, who illuminated Leyden with their
presence. … But it was not alone in scholarship and in
scientific research that the University of Leyden gave an
impetus to modern thought. Theological disputes were developed
there at times, little tempests which threatened destruction
to the institution, but they were of short duration. The right
of conscience was always respected, and in the main the right
of full and public discussion. … When it was settled that
dissenters could not be educated in the English universities,
they flocked to Leyden in great numbers, making that city,
next to Edinburgh, their chief resort. Eleven years after the
opening of the University of Leyden, the Estates of democratic
Friesland, amid the din of war, founded the University of
Franeker, an institution which was to become famous as the
home of Arminius. … Both of these universities were
perpetually endowed with the proceeds of the ecclesiastical
property which had been confiscated during the progress of the
war."

_D. Campbell,
The Puritan in Holland, England, and America,
chapters 2, 20, and 3._

EDUCATION:
England.

"In contemplating the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, in their influence on English civilisation, we are
reminded once more of the futility of certain modern
aspirations. No amount of University Commissions, nor of
well-meant reforms, will change the nature of Englishmen. It
is impossible, by distributions of University prizes and
professorships, to attract into the career of letters that
proportion of industry and ingenuity which, in Germany for
example, is devoted to the scholastic life.
{707}
Politics, trade, law, sport, religion, will claim their own in
England, just as they did at the Revival of Letters. The
illustrious century which Italy employed in unburying,
appropriating, and enjoying the treasures of Greek literature
and art, our fathers gave, in England, to dynastic and
constitutional squabbles, and to religious broils. The
Renaissance in England, and chiefly in Oxford, was like a
bitter and changeful spring. There was an hour of genial
warmth, there breathed a wind from the south, in the lifetime
of Chaucer; then came frosts and storms; again the brief
sunshine of court favour shone on literature for a while, when
Henry VIII. encouraged study, and Wolsey and Fox founded
Christ Church and Corpus Christi College, once more the bad
days of religious strife returned, and the promise of learning
was destroyed. Thus the chief result of the awakening thought
of the fourteenth century in England was not a lively delight
in literature, but the appearance of the Lollards. The
intensely practical genius of our race turned, not to letters,
but to questions about the soul and its future, about property
and its distribution. The Lollards were put down in Oxford;
'the tares were weeded out' by the House of Lancaster, and in
the process the germs of free thought, of originality, and of
a rational education, were destroyed. 'Wyclevism did domineer
among us,' says Wood; and, in fact, the intellect of the
University was absorbed, like the intellect of France during
the heat of the Jansenist controversy, in defending or
assailing '267 damned conclusions,' drawn from the books of
Wyclife. The University 'lost many of her children through the
profession of Wyclevism.'"

_A. Lang,
Oxford,
chapter 3._

EDUCATION:
Colet and St. Paul's School.

Dr. John Colet, appointed Dean of St. Paul's in 1505,
"resolved, whilst living and in health, to devote his
patrimony to the foundation of a school in St. Paul's
Churchyard, wherein 153 children, without any restriction as
to nation or country, who could already read and write, and
were of 'good parts and capacities,' should receive a sound
Christian education. The 'Latin adulterate, which ignorant
blind fools brought into this world,' poisoning thereby 'the
old Latin speech, and the very Roman tongue used in the time
of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, and learned by
St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine,'—all that
'abusion which the later blind world brought in, and which may
rather be called Blotterature than Literature,'—should be
'utterly abanished and excluded' out of this school. The
children should be taught good literature, both Latin and
Greek, 'such authors that have with wisdom joined pure chaste
eloquence'—'specially Christian authors who wrote their
wisdom in clean and chaste Latin, whether in prose or verse;
for,' said Colet, 'my intent is by this school specially to
increase knowledge, and worshipping of God and Our Lord Jesus
Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.'
… The building consisted of one large room, divided into an
upper and lower school by a curtain, which could be drawn at
pleasure; and the charge of the two schools devolved upon a
high-master and a sub-master respectively. The forms were
arranged so as each to seat sixteen boys, and were provided
each with a raised desk, at which the head-boy sat as
president. The building also embraced an entrance-porch and a
little chapel for divine service. Dwelling-houses were
erected, adjoining the school, for the residence of the two
masters; and for their support, Colet obtained, in the spring
of 1510, a royal license to transfer to the Wardens and Guild
of Mercers in London, real property to the value of £53 per
annum (equivalent to at least £530 of present money). Of this
the head-master was to receive as his salary £35 (say £350)
and the under-master £18 (say £180) per annum. Three or four
years after, Colet made provision for a chaplain to conduct
divine service in the chapel, and to instruct the children in
the Catechism, the Articles of the faith, and the Ten
Commandments,—in English; and ultimately, before his death,
he appears to have increased the amount of the whole endowment
to £122 (say £1,200) per annum. So that it, may be considered,
roughly, that the whole endowment, including the buildings,
cannot have represented a less sum than £30,000 or £40,000 of
present money. And if Colet thus sacrificed so much of his
private fortune to secure a liberal (and it must be conceded
his was a liberal) provision for the remuneration of the
masters who should educate his 153 boys, he must surely have
had deeply at heart the welfare of the boys themselves. And,
in truth, it was so. Colet was like a father to his
schoolboys. … It was not to be expected that he should find
the school-books of the old grammarians in any way adapted to
his purpose. So at once he set his learned friends to work to
provide him with new ones. The first thing wanted was a Latin
Grammar for beginners. Linacre undertook to provide this want,
and wrote with great pains and labour, a work in six books,
which afterwards came into general use. But when Colet saw it,
at the risk of displeasing his friend, he put it altogether
aside. It was too long and too learned for his 'little
beginners.' So he condensed within the compass of a few pages
two little treatises, an 'Accidence' and a 'Syntax,' in the
preface to the first of which occur the gentle words quoted
above. These little books, after receiving additions from the
hands of Erasmus, Lilly, and others, finally became generally
adopted and known as Lilly's Grammar. This rejection of his
Grammar seems to have been a sore point with Linacre, but
Erasmus told Colet not to be too much concerned about it. …
Erasmus, in the same letter in which he spoke of Linacre's
rejected Grammar … put on paper his notions of what a
schoolmaster ought to be, and the best method of teaching
boys, which he fancied Colet might not altogether approve, as
he was wont somewhat more to despise rhetoric than Erasmus
did. He stated his opinion that—'In order that the teacher
might be thoroughly up to his work, he should not merely be a
master of one particular branch of study. He should himself
have travelled through the whole circle of knowledge. In
philosophy he should have studied Plato and Aristotle,
Theophrastus and Plotinus; in Theology the Sacred Scriptures,
and after them Origen, Chrysostom, and Basil among the Greek
fathers, and Ambrose and Jerome among the Latin fathers; among
the poets, Homer and Ovid; in geography, which is very
important in the study of history, Pomponins Mela, Ptolemy,
Pliny, Strabo. He should know what ancient names of rivers,
mountains, countries, cities, answer to the modern ones; and
the same of trees, animals, instruments, clothes, and, gems,
with regard to which it is incredible how ignorant even
educated men are.
{708}
He should take note of little facts about agriculture,
architecture, military and culinary arts, mentioned by
different authors. He should be able to trace the origin of
words, their gradual corruption in the languages of
Constantinople, Italy, Spain, and France. Nothing should be
beneath his observation which can illustrate history or the
meaning of the poets. But you will say what a load you are
putting on the back of the poor teacher! It is so; but I
burden the one to relieve the many. I want the teacher to have
traversed the whole range of knowledge, that it may spare each
of his scholars doing it. A diligent and thoroughly competent
master might give boys a fair proficiency in both Latin and
Greek, in a shorter time and with less labour than the common
run of pedagogues take to teach their babble.' On receipt of
this … Colet wrote to Erasmus: … '"What! I shall not
approve!" So you say! What is there of Erasmus's that I do not
approve?'"

_F. Seebohm,
The Oxford Reformers,
chapter 6._

EDUCATION:
Ascham and "The Scholemaster."

Roger Ascham, the friend of Lady Jane Grey and the tutor of
Queen Elizabeth, was born in 1515, and died in 1568. "It was
partly with the view to the instruction of his own children,
that he commenced the 'Schole-master,' the work by which he is
most and best known, to which he did not live to set the last
hand. He communicated the design and import of the book in a
letter to Sturmius, in which he states, that not being able to
leave his sons a large fortune, he was resolved to provide
them with a preceptor, not one to be hired for a great sum of
money, but marked out at home with a homely pen. In the same
letter he gives his reasons for employing the English
language, the capabilities of which he clearly perceived and
candidly acknowledged, a high virtue for a man of that age,
who perhaps could have written Latin to his own satisfaction
much more easily than his native tongue. But though the
benefit of his own offspring might be his ultimate object, the
immediate occasion of the work was a conversation at Cecil's,
at which Sir Richard Sackville expressed great indignation at
the severities practiced at Eton and other great schools, so
that boys actually ran away for fear of merciless
flagellation. This led to the general subject of school
discipline, and the defects in the then established modes of
tuition. Ascham coinciding with the sentiments of the company,
and proceeding to explain his own views of improvement,
Sackville requested him to commit his opinions to paper and
the 'Schole-master' was the result. It was not published till
1670. … We … quote a few passages, which throw light upon
the author's good sense and good nature. To all violent
coercion, and extreme punishment, he was decidedly
opposed:—'I do agree,' says he, 'with all good school-masters
in all these points, to have children brought to good
perfectness in learning, to all honesty in manners; to have
all faults rightly amended, and every vice severely corrected,
but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these
points, we somewhat differ.' 'Love is better than fear,
gentleness than beating, to bring up a child rightly in
learning.' 'I do assure you there is no such whetstone to
sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is
praise.'… 'The scholar is commonly beat for the making, when
the master were more worthy to be beat for the mending, or
rather marring, of the same; the master many times being as
ignorant as the child what to say properly and fitly to the
matter.' … This will I say, that even the wisest of your
great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct
faults. Yea many times the better nature is the sorer
punished. For if one by quickness of wit take his lesson
readily, another by hardness of wit taketh it not so speedily;
the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished,
when a wise school-master should rather discreetly consider
the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much
weigh what either of them is able to do, as what either of
them is likely to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by
reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life
abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest,
the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were
never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young. Quick
wits commonly be apt to take, unapt to keep. Some are more
quick to enter speedily than be able to pierce far, even like
unto oversharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned.'"

_H. Coleridge,
Biographia Borealis,
pages 328-330._

EDUCATION:
Jesuit Teaching and Schools.

"The education of youth is set forth in the Formula of
Approval granted by Paul III. in 1540," to the plans of
Ignatius Loyola for the foundation of the Society of Jesus,
"as the first duty embraced by the new Institute. … Although
the new religious were not at once able to begin the
establishment of colleges, yet the plan of those afterwards
founded, was gradually ripening in the sagacious mind of St.
Ignatius, who looked to these institutions as calculated to
oppose the surest bulwarks against the progress of heresy. The
first regular college of the Society was that established at
Gandia in 1546, through the zeal of St. Francis Borgia, third
General of the Society; and the regulations by which it was
governed, and which were embodied in the constitutions, were
extended to all the Jesuit colleges afterwards founded. The
studies were to include theology, both positive and
scholastic, as well as grammar, poetry, rhetoric, and
philosophy. The course of philosophy was to last three years,
that of theology four; and the Professors of Philosophy were
enjoined to treat their subject in such a way as to dispose
the mind for the study of theology, instead of setting up
faith and reason in opposition to one another. The theology of
St. Thomas, and the philosophy of Aristotle, were to be
followed, except on those points where the teaching of the
latter was opposed to the Catholic faith."

_A. T. Drane,
Christian Schools and Scholars,
page 708._

"As early as the middle of the sixteenth century … [the
Society of Jesus] had several colleges in France, particularly
those of Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Tournon, and Pamiers. In 1561
it secured a footing in Paris, notwithstanding the resistance
of the Parliament, of the university, and of the bishops
themselves. A hundred years later it counted nearly fourteen
thousand pupils in the province of Paris alone. The college of
Clermont, in 1651, enrolled more than two thousand young men.
The middle and higher classes assured to the colleges of the
society an ever-increasing membership.
{709}
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits could
inscribe on the roll of honor of their classes a hundred
illustrious names, among others those of Condé and Luxembourg,
Fléchier and Bossuet, Lamoignon and Séguier, Descartes,
Comeille, and Moliere. In 1710 they controlled six hundred and
twelve colleges and a large number of universities. They were
the real masters of education, and they maintained this
educational supremacy till the end of the eighteenth century.
Voltaire said of these teachers: 'The Fathers taught me
nothing but Latin and nonsense.' But from the seventeenth
century, opinions are divided, and the encomiums of Bacon and
Descartes must be offset by the severe judgment of Leibnitz.
'In the matter of education, says this great philosopher, 'the
Jesuits have remained below mediocrity.' Directly to the
contrary, Bacon had written: 'As to whatever relates to the
instruction of the young, we must consult the schools of the
Jesuits, for there can be nothing that is better done.' … A
permanent and characteristic feature of the educational policy
of the Jesuits is, that, during the whole course of their
history, they have deliberately neglected and disdained
primary instruction. The earth is covered with their Latin
colleges; and wherever they have been able, they have put
their hands on the institutions for university education; but
in no instance have they founded a primary school. Even in
their establishment for secondary instruction, they entrust
the lower classes to teachers who do not belong to their
order, and reserve to themselves the direction of the higher
classes."

_G. Compayré,
History of Pedagogy,
pages 141-143._

See, also, JESUITS: A. D. 1540-1556.

"The Jesuits owed their success partly to the very narrow task
which they set themselves, little beyond the teaching of Latin
style, and partly to the careful training which they gave
their students, a training which often degenerated into mere
mechanical exercise. But the mainspring of their influence was
the manner in which they worked the dangerous force of
emulation. Those pupils who were most distinguished at the end
of each month received the rank of prætor, censor, and
decurion. The class was divided into two parts, called Romans
and Carthaginians, Greeks and Trojans. The students sat
opposite each other, the master in the middle, the walls were
hung with swords, spears and shields which the contending
parties carried off in triumph as the prize of victory. These
pupils' contests wasted a great deal of time. The Jesuits
established public school festivals, at which the pupils might
be exhibited, and the parents flattered. They made their own
school books, in which the requirements of good teaching were
not so important as the religious objects of the order. They
preferred extracts to whole authors; if they could not prune
the classics to their fancy they would not read them at all.
What judgment are we to pass on the Jesuit teaching as a
whole? It deserves praise on two accounts. First, it
maintained the dignity of literature in an age which was too
liable to be influenced by considerations of practical
utility. It maintained the study of Greek in France at a
higher level than the University, and resisted the assaults of
ignorant parents on the fortress of Hellenism. Secondly, it
seriously set itself to understand the nature and character of
the individual pupil, and to suit the manner of education to
the mind that was to receive it. Whatever may have been the
motives of Jesuits in gaining the affections, and securing the
devotion of the children under their charge; whether their
desire was to develop the individuality which they probed, or
to destroy it in its germ, and plant a new nature in its
place; it must be admitted that the loving care which they
spent upon their charge was a new departure in education, and
has become a part of every reasonable system since their time.
Here our praise must end. … They amused the mind instead of
strengthening it. They occupied in frivolities such as Latin
verses the years which they feared might otherwise be given to
reasoning and the acquisition of solid knowledge. …
Celebrated as the Jesuit schools have been, they have owed
much more to the fashion which filled them with promising
scholars, than to their own excellence in dealing with their
material. … They have never stood the test of modern
criticism. They have no place in a rational system of modern
education."

_O. Browning,
Introduction to the History of Educational Theories,
chapter 8._

EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Austria.

"The annual appropriations passed by Parliament allow the
minister of public instruction $8,307,774 for all kinds of
public educational institutions, elementary and secondary
schools, universities, technical and art schools, museums, and
philanthropic institutions. Generally, this principle is
adhered to by the state, to subsidize the highest institutions
of learning most liberally, to share the cost of maintaining
secondary schools with church and community, and to leave the
burden of maintaining elementary schools almost entirely to
the local or communal authorities. … In the Austrian public
schools no distinctions are made with the pupils as regards
their religious confessions. The schools are open to all, and
are therefore common schools in the sense in which that term
is employed with us. In Prussia it is the policy of the
Government to separate the pupils of different religious
confessions in … elementary, but not to separate them in
secondary schools. In Austria and Hungary, special teachers of
religion for the elementary and secondary schools are
employed; in Prussia this is done only in secondary schools,
while religion is taught by the secular teachers in elementary
schools. This is a very vital difference, and shows how much
nearer the Austrian schools have come to our ideal of a common
school."

_United States Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90,
pages 465-466._

EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Belgium.

"The treaty of Paris, of March 30, 1814, fixed the boundaries
of the Netherlands, and united Holland and Belgium. In these
new circumstances, the system of public instruction became the
subject of much difficulty between the Calvinists of the
northern provinces and the Catholics of the southern. The
government therefore undertook itself to manage the
organization of the system of instruction in its three grades.
… William I. desired to free the Belgians from French
influence, and with this object adopted the injudicious
measure of attempting to force the Dutch language upon them.
He also endeavored to familiarize them with Protestant ideas,
and to this end determined to get the care of religious
instruction exclusively into the hands of the state. But the
clergy were energetic in asserting their rights; the boldness
of the Belgian deputies to the States-General increased daily;
and the project for a system of public and private instruction
which was laid before the second chamber on the 26th November,
1829, was very unfavorably received by the Catholics. The
government very honorably confessed its error by repealing the
obnoxious ordinances of 1825. But it was too late, and the
Belgian provinces were lost to Holland. On the 12th October,
1830, the provisory government repealed all laws restricting
the freedom of instruction, and the present system, in which
liberty of instruction and governmental aid and supervision
are recognized, commenced."

_Public Instruction in Belgium
(Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 8, pages 582-583)._

{710}

EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Denmark.

"Denmark has long been noted for the excellence of her
schools. … The perfection and extension of the system of
popular instruction date from the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when Bishop Thestrup, of Aalberg, caused 6 parish
schools to be established in Copenhagen and when King
Frederick IV. (1699-1730) had 240 school-houses built. …
Christian VI. (17301746), … ordained in 1739 the
establishment of common or parish schools in every town and in
every larger village. The branches of instruction were to be
religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. No one was to be
allowed to teach unless he had shown himself qualified to the
satisfaction of the clergyman of the parish. …. Many
difficulties, however (especially the objections of the landed
proprietors, who had their own schools on their estates),
hindered the free development of the common school system, and
it was not until 1814 that a new and more favorable era was
inaugurated by the law of July 29 of that year. According to
this law the general control of the schools is in the hands of
a minister of public instruction and subordinate
superintendents for the several departments of the kingdom."

_Education in Denmark
(United States Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1877, no. 2),
pages 40-41._

"With a population in 1890 of 2,185,157, the pupils enrolled
in city and rural schools in Denmark numbered 231,940, or
about 10 per cent. of the population receiving the foundation
of an education. In 1881 the illiterates to 100 recruits
numbered 0.36; in Sweden at that date, the per cent. was
0.39."

_United States Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90,
page 523._

EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
England: Oxford and Cambridge.

"Oxford and Cambridge, as establishments for education,
consist of two parts—of the University proper, and of the
Colleges. The former, original and essential, is founded,
controlled, and privileged by public authority, for the
advantage of the nation. The latter, accessory and contingent,
are created, regulated, and endowed by private munificence,
for the interest of certain favored individuals. Time was,
when the Colleges did not exist, and the University was there;
and were the Colleges again abolished, the University would
remain entire. The former, founded solely for education,
exists only as it accomplishes the end of its institution; the
latter, founded principally for aliment and habitation, would
still exist, were all education abandoned within their walls.
The University, as a national establishment, is necessarily
open to the lieges in general; the Colleges, as private
institutions, might universally do, as some have actually
done—close their gates upon all, except their foundation
members. The Universities and Colleges are thus neither
identical, nor vicarious of each other. If the University
ceases to perform its functions, it ceases to exist; and the
privileges accorded by the nation to the system of public
education legally organized in the University, can not,
without the consent of the nation—far less without the
consent of the academical legislature—be lawfully transferred
to the system of private education precariously organized in
the Colleges, and over which neither the State nor the
University have any control. They have, however, been
unlawfully usurped. Through the suspension of the University,
and the usurpation of its functions and privileges by the
Collegial bodies, there has arisen the second of two systems,
diametrically opposite to each other.—The one, in which the
University was paramount, is ancient and statutory; the other,
in which the Colleges have the ascendant, is recent and
illegal.—In the former, all was subservient to public
utility, and the interests of science; in the latter, all is
sacrificed to private monopoly, and to the convenience of the
teacher. … In the original constitution of Oxford, as in
that of all the older Universities of the Parisian model, the
business of instruction was not confided to a special body of
privileged professors. The University was governed, the
University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor,
Master, Doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had
an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the
subjects competent to his faculty, and to the rank of his
degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of
teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his
faculty, for such was the condition involved in the grant of
the degree itself."

_Sir William Hamilton,
Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc.: Education,
chapter 4._

EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
England: The "Great Public Schools."

What is a public school in England? "The question is one of
considerable difficulty. To some extent, however, the answer
has been furnished by the Royal Commission appointed in 1861
to inquire into the nature and application of the endowments
and revenues, and into the administration and management of
certain specified colleges and schools commonly known as the
Public Schools Commission. Nine are named in the Queen's
letter of appointment, viz., Eton, Winchester, Westminster,
the Charterhouse, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow,
Rugby, and Shrewsbury. The reasons probably which suggested
this selection were, that the nine named foundations had in
the course of centuries emerged from the mass of endowed
grammar-schools, and had made for themselves a position which
justified their being placed in a distinct category, and
classed as 'public schools.' It will be seen as we proceed
that all these nine have certain features in common,
distinguishing them from the ordinary grammar-schools which
exist in almost every country town in England. Many of these
latter are now waking up to the requirements of the new time
and following the example of their more illustrious sisters.
The most notable examples of this revival are such schools as
those at Sherborne, Giggleswick, and Tunbridge Wells, which,
while remodelling themselves on the lines laid down by the
Public Schools Commissioners, are to some extent providing a
training more adapted to the means and requirements of our
middle classes in the nineteenth century than can be found at
any of the nine public schools.
{711}
But twenty years ago the movement which has since made such
astonishing progress was scarcely felt in quiet country places
like these, and the old endowments were allowed to run to
waste in a fashion which is now scarcely credible. The same
impulse which has put new life into the endowed
grammar-schools throughout England has worked even more
remarkably in another direction. The Victorian age bids fair
to rival the Elizabethan in the number and importance of the
new schools which it has founded and will hand on to the
coming generation. Marlborough, Haileybury, Uppingham,
Rossall, Clifton, Cheltenham, Radley, Malvern, and Wellington
College, are nine schools which have taken their place in the
first rank. … In order, then, to get clear ideas on the
general question, we must keep these three classes of schools
in mind—the nine old foundations recognized in the first
instance by the Royal Commission of 1861; the old foundations
which have remained local grammar-schools until within the
last few years, but are now enlarging their bounds, conforming
more or less to the public-school system, and becoming
national institutions; and, lastly, the modern foundations
which started from the first as public schools, professing to
adapt themselves to the new circumstances and requirements of
modern English life. The public schools of England fall under
one or other of these categories. … We may now turn to the
historic side of the question, dealing first, as is due to
their importance, with the nine schools of our first category.
The oldest, and in some respects most famous of these, is
Winchester School, or, as it was named by its founder William
of Wykeham, the College of St. Mary of Winchester, founded in
1382. Its constitution still retains much of the impress left
on it by the great Bishop of the greatest Plantagenet King,
five centuries ago. Toward the end of the fourteenth century
Oxford was already the center of English education, but from
the want of grammar-schools boys went up by hundreds untaught
in the simplest rudiments of learning, and when there lived in
private hostels or lodging-houses, in a vast throng, under no
discipline, and exposed to many hardships and temptations. In
view of this state of things, William of Wykeham founded his
grammar-school at Winchester and his college at Oxford,
binding the two together, so that the school might send up
properly trained scholars to the university, where they would
be received at New College, in a suitable academical home,
which should in its turn furnish governors and masters for the
school. … Next in date comes the royal foundation of Eton,
or 'The College of the Blessed Mary of Eton, near Windsor.' It
was founded by Henry VI., A. D. 1446, upon the model of
Winchester, with a collegiate establishment of a provost, ten
fellows (reduced to seven in the reign of Edward IV.), seventy
scholars, and ten chaplains (now reduced to two; who are
called 'conducts'), and a head and lower master, ten lay
clerks, and twelve choristers. The provost and fellows are the
governing body, who appoint the head master. … Around this
center the great school, numbering now a thousand boys, has
gathered, the college, however, still retaining its own
separate organization and traditions. Besides the splendid
buildings and playing-fields at Eton, the college holds real
property of the yearly value of upward of £20,000, and forty'
livings ranging from £100 to £1,200 of yearly value. … The
school next in date stands out in sharp contrast to Winchester
and Eton. It is St. Paul's School, founded by Dean Colet. …
Shrewsbury School, which follows next in order of seniority,
claims a royal foundation, but is in reality the true child of
the town's folk. The dissolution of the monasteries destroyed
also the seminaries attached to many of them, to the great
injury of popular education. This was specially the case in
Shropshire, so in 1551 the bailiffs, burgesses, and
inhabitants of Shrewsbury and the neighborhood petitioned
Edward VI. for a grant of some portion of the estates of the
dissolved collegiate churches for the purpose of founding a
free school. The King consented, and granted to the
petitioners the appropriated tithes of several livings and a
charter, but died before the school was organized. It was in
abeyance during Mary's reign, but opened in the fourth year of
Elizabeth, 1562, by Thomas Aston. … We have now reached the
great group of Elizabethan schools, to which indeed Shrewsbury
may also be said to belong, as it was not opened until the
Queen had been three years on the throne. The two metropolitan
schools of Westminster and Merchant Taylors' were in fact
founded in 1560, two years before the opening of Shrewsbury.
Westminster as a royal foundation must take precedence. It is
a grammar-school attached by the Queen to the collegiate
church of St. Peter, commonly called Westminster Abbey, and
founded for the free education of forty scholars in Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. The Queen, with characteristic thriftiness,
provided no endowment for her school, leaving the cost of
maintenance as a charge on the general revenues of the dean
and chapter, which indeed were, then as now, fully competent
to sustain the burden. … Merchant Taylors', the other
metropolitan school founded in 1560, owes its origin to Sir
Thomas White, a member of the Court of Assistants of the
company, and founder of St. John's College, Oxford. It was
probably his promise to connect the school with his college
which induced the Company to undertake the task. … Sir
Thomas White redeemed his promise by endowing the school with
thirty-seven fellowships at St. John's College. … Rugby, or
the free school of Lawrence Sheriff, follows next in order,
having been founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, grocer, and
citizen of London. His 'intent' (as the document expressing
his wishes is called) declares that his lands in Rugby and
Brownsover, and his 'third of a pasture-ground in Gray's Inn
Fields, called Conduit Close,' shall be applied to maintain a
free grammar school for the children of Rugby and Brownsover,
and the places adjoining, and four poor almsmen of the same
parishes. These estates, after providing a fair schoolhouse
and residences for the master and almsmen, at first produced a
rental of only £24 13s. 4d. In due time, however, Conduit
Close became a part of central London, and Rugby School the
owner of eight acres of houses in and about the present Lamb's
Conduit Street. The income of the whole trust property amounts
now to about £6,000, of which £255 is expended on the
maintenance of the twelve almsmen. … Harrow School was
founded in 1571, four years later than Rugby, by John Lyon, a
yeoman of the parish.
{712}
He was owner of certain small estates in and about Harrow and
Barnet, and of others at Paddington and Kilburn. All these he
devoted to public purposes, but unfortunately gave the former
for the perpetual education of the children and youth of the
parish, and the latter for the maintenance and repair of the
highways from Harrow and Edgeware to London. The present
yearly revenue of the school estates is barely over £1,000,
while that of the highway trust is nearly £4,000. But, though
the poorest in endowments, Harrow, from its nearness to
London, and consequent attractions for the classes who spend a
large portion of their year in the metropolis either in
attendance in Parliament, or for pleasure, has become the
rival of Eton as a fashionable school. … Last on the list of
the nine schools comes the Charterhouse (the Whitefriars of
Thackeray's novels). It may be fairly classed with the
Elizabethan schools, though actually founded in 1609, after
the accession of James I. In that year a substantial yeoman,
Thomas Sutton by name, purchased from Lord Suffolk the lately
dissolved Charterhouse, by Smithfield, and obtained letters
patent empowering him to found a hospital and school on the
old site."

_T. Hughes,
The Public Schools of England
(North American Review, April, 1879)._

EDUCATION: England
Fagging.

"In rougher days it was found, that in large schools the
stronger and larger boys reduced the smaller and weaker to the
condition of Helots. Here the authorities stepped in, and
despairing of eradicating the evil, took the power which mere
strength had won, and conferred it upon the seniors of the
school—the members, that is, of the highest form or forms. As
in those days, promotion was pretty much a matter of rotation,
everyone who remained his full time at the school, was pretty
sure to reach in time the dominant class, and the humblest fag
looked forward to the day when he would join the ranks of the
ruling aristocracy. Meantime he was no longer at the beck of
any stronger or ruder classfellow. His 'master' was in theory,
and often in practice, his best protector: he imposed upon him
very likely what may be called menial offices—made him carry
home his 'Musæ'—field for him at cricket—brush his coat; if
we are to believe school myths and traditions, black his
shoes, and even take the chill off his sheets. The boy,
how-ever, saw the son of a Howard or a Percy similarly
employed by his side, and in cheerfully submitting to an
ancient custom, he was but following out the tendencies of the
age and class to which he belonged. … The mere abolition of
the right of fagging, vague and undefined as were the duties
attached to it, would have been a loss rather than a gain to
the oppressed as a class. It would merely have substituted for
the existing law, imperfect and anomalous as that law might
be, the licence of brute force and the dominion of boyish
truculence. … Such was, more or less, the state of things
when he to whom English education owes so incalculable a debt,
was placed at the head of Rugby School. … It was hoped that
he who braved the anger of his order by his pamphlet on Church
Reform—at whose bold and uncompromising language bishops
stood aghast and courtly nobles remonstrated in vain—would
make short work of ancient saws and mediæval traditions—that
a revolution in school life was at hand. And they were not
mistaken. … What he did was to seize on the really valuable
part of the existing system—to inspire it with that new life,
and those loftier purposes, without which mere institutions,
great or small, must, sooner or later, wither away and perish.
His first step was to effect an important change in the actual
machinery of the school—one which, in itself, amounted to a
revolution. The highest form in the school was no longer open
to all whom a routine promotion might raise in course of time
to its level. Industry and talent as tested by careful
examinations (in the additional labour of which he himself
bore the heaviest burden), were the only qualifications
recognised. The new-modelled 'sixth form' were told, that the
privileges and powers which their predecessors had enjoyed for
ages were not to be wrested from them; but that they were to
be held for the common good, as the badges and instruments of
duties and responsibilities, such as anyone with less
confidence in those whom he addressed would have hesitated to
impose. They were told plainly that without their co-operation
there was no hope of keeping in check the evils inherent in a
society of boys. Tyranny, falsehood, drinking, party-spirit,
coarseness, selfishness—the evil spirits that infest
schools—these they heard Sunday after Sunday put in their
true light by a majestic voice and a manly presence, with
words, accents, and manner which would live in their memory
for years; but they were warned that, to exercise such
spirits, something more was needed than the watchfulness of
masters and the energy of their chief. They themselves must
use their large powers, entrusted to them in recognition of
the principle, or rather of the fact, that in a large society
of boys some must of necessity hold sway, to keep down, in
themselves and those about them, principles and practices
which are ever ready, like hideous weeds, to choke the growth
of all that is fair and noble in such institutions. Dr. Arnold
persevered in spite of opposition, obloquy, and
misrepresentation. … But he firmly established his system,
and his successors, men differing in training and temperament
from himself and from each other, have agreed in cordially
sustaining it. His pupils and theirs, men in very different
walks of life, filling honourable posts at the universities
and public schools, or ruling the millions of India, or
working among the blind and toiling multitudes of our great
towns, feel daily how much of their usefulness and power they
owe to the sense of high trust and high duty which they
imbibed at school."

_Our Public Schools—Their Discipline and Instruction
(Fraser's Magazine, volume 1, pages 407-409)._

EDUCATION: England: A. D. 1699-1870.
The rise of Elementary Schools.