Chapter II: Introduction

The Ægean peninsula was the great reservoir of ancient civilization into which the cultural stream of every nation around the Mediterranean had its outlet and from which all subsequent ages of Europe have drawn. Therefore without an understanding of the Greek ideas and ideals of education we shall not be able to understand the European ideas and ideals of education. As Compayré says, “in respect to education, as in respect to everything else, the higher spiritual life of modern nations has been developed under the influence of Grecian antiquity” (5: p. 18). And we can safely say that, with the exception of the ancient Chinese--so misunderstood and misrepresented in the West, but the Greek of the Orient in my opinion--no nation in antiquity represents modern conceptions so nearly as the Greek, especially the Athenian.

The complete and harmonious development of the human body and soul in their strength and beauty; the perfect and full, yet regulated enjoyment of earthly life in its social as well as individual form; the attainment of virtue and happiness in and through the state--these were the fundamental ideals which governed the ancient Greeks. The state not only took nearly the sole charge of the education of its citizens, but it was in itself the educational and educative institution. People were educated through their social and communal life. The part played by the school was very small; it had a later and private origin, beginning with the rhetoricians and philosophers, and meeting the need of the few.

There were two main types in Greek education, one represented by the Spartans, the other by the Athenians. In the former, the power and vigor of personality were emphasized above all else, while in the latter, beauty and wisdom were adored. The former produced men of action, the latter, persons of elegant manners and speech. Efficiency in the state service had larger place in the former; individual perfection and felicity received more attention in the latter. In a word, the Athenian represented intellectual and æsthetic culture; the Spartan, military and moral culture.

In Greece, the Athenian ideals and tendencies superseded the Spartan, and Greece lost her vitality under the pressure of overintellectualization, overrefinement, and the almost necessary consequence, overindividualization. But the Spartan ideal revived in Rome; military and political Rome needed men of strength and action for its citizens. So, while the Greek philosophy degenerated into Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic mysticism, stern and practical stoicism took root in Italy. Roman education was essentially the education of her warriors and legislators; physical and mental vigor and courage, justice, integrity, and practical sense were to be cultivated above everything else; mere knowledge and effeminate refinement were despised. While the Greeks intrusted the education of their children largely to the State, the Romans laid great stress upon the home training. Not the group life of children among themselves and under adult influences, but the personal direction and discipline of parents were to be the chief molding power. Rome thus had no public institution concerned with the education of her children until she began to imitate Greece and establish schools for the teaching of grammar and rhetoric. Cicero gave voice to the individualistic point of view of old Roman education when he said: “Our ancestors did not wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by the laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all” (5: p. 46).

The advent of Christianity necessarily introduced a new epoch in the tendency of education as well as in the general course of social evolution. Its fundamental principles, unity with the absolute, supreme, personality as the destiny and possibility of each individual, the realization of the kingdom of God, to be governed by justice, love, peace, and felicity as the common aim of the whole body of humanity, should have become the higher realization of the Greek ideals of life. But Christianity in its historic form, as an outgrowth from the Semites, promulgated by single-minded enthusiasts, was fated to conflict with Hellenic thought. It not only neglected the civic and economic life of the state, but condemned, as asceticism crept in, the perfection and enjoyment of earthly existence. The natural man was evil; passion made the body the source of sin. Even the improvement of intellect or taste was considered to be contrary to religion. Its God became deprived of all His human qualities or content, and was made an abstract, negative spirituality. The kingdom of God receded to the other world beyond the grave or to some imagined distance. It conceived everything human and natural as opposed to the divine and spiritual, and strove to crush the body that the soul might live. Thus instead of a new heaven and a new earth, the age of death and darkness came to be introduced into the European world.

Education in the Middle Ages was largely education through and for the Church. The reward of the victory of Christianity over the pagan world through that long-suffering struggle and martyrdom was the Church universal, enthroned above all other human institutions. The seat of divine authority, the ultimate standard of evaluation shifted from the state to the Church infallible. Schools were established, universities organized, but in them the young generation was trained to be better citizens of a future heavenly state or to serve ecclesiastic interests. Efficiency in social life or the qualities of individual personality as such were scarcely considered.

Outside the Church there was constant warfare within and among newly risen nations. Neither rulers nor the people themselves had time to give their attention to the advancement of culture. The education of the knights was essentially military; that of the masses, limited chiefly to the training naturally offered by home occupations and trades. The settlement of nations, the rise of free cities, more peace and prosperity, necessarily tended to arouse an interest in culture. Contact with the Hellenic and Eastern civilizations through the crusades, the discovery of America, the expansion of foreign trade, all could not but broaden the mental horizon and vitalize the soul. The dialectic education of scholasticism, although formal, had sharpened the reasoning powers of men. With a new explosion of self-consciousness and life impulse, Europe keenly realized the pressure of the Church, its dogmatism and asceticism. The revolt against its dogmatism was the Reformation, the revolt against its asceticism was Humanism.

The Humanistic movement started as the revival of the ancient classics. Tired of the dry, attenuated Latin of church scholasticism, the student wanted to return to the naïve, simple, yet beautiful literature of the old Roman and Hellenic masters. Weary of the sophistical interpretation and disputation of the Greek philosophers, he desired to drink directly from their untainted source.

This Renaissance, though mainly literary at its beginning, brought back the seemingly exterminated spirit and ideals of the ancient world, especially of Athens. Man, liberated from the bondage of monastic spirituality, returned to the human. The beauty and joy of life and the arts were again restored; learning came to be pursued for its own sake.

But the age of the Renaissance tended to exalt intellectual and æsthetic culture at the expense of the moral. The revival of Hellenism brought with it antireligious tendencies and threatened to bring to naught Europe’s labor of centuries to build up Christian character. This was rescued by the stronger sister movement of the Reformation, which united in it both the Hellenic and Christian spirit leading Christianity to its destined end--namely, to become a human religion. Unity of religion and life, heaven and earth, divine and human, now enters into the consciousness of the race. The dignity of individual conscience and reason, the equal destiny of all mankind without national, class, or sex discrimination, the future grandeur of the race and its earthly abode, begin to become the living faith of the West. Mediæval Christianity aimed to establish a spiritual kingdom beside and beyond the earthly one; modern Christianity aims at the gradual spiritualization of the earthly kingdom. Although the above revelation or message of Christianity was again submerged under the new scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into which Protestantism fell, the modern world has never lacked men of insight who, from time to time, have proclaimed it.

No great new movement in history can pass without having its influence in the field of education. The Reformation really marks the beginning of modern education in the West, though to the Catholic Church belongs the honor of having preserved through the dark ages the treasures of ancient culture which made the Renaissance possible. In it we see the basis and germs of the fundamental ideas and ideals which have governed the education of Christendom until to-day. Luther is naturally the greatest name in this movement and deserves to represent it in its educational as well as religious aspect. As Compayré says:

“The German reformer Luther is, of all his co-religionists, the one who has served the cause of elementary instruction with the most ardor. He not only addressed a pressing appeal to the ruling classes in behalf of founding schools for the people, but, by his influence methods of instruction were improved, and the educational spirit was renewed in accordance with the principles of Protestantism” (5: p. 114).

If Luther had done nothing else than translate the Bible into German, he would have been remembered as a great pedagogic figure. Through his translation the Bible became the text-book of the people, not only in religion and morality, but also in language study. His plain, refined style is said to have introduced a new era in the German language and worked toward the unification of the national speech. But he did more direct service for the cause of education. In 1519 he wrote a sermon on married life, in which he appeals to the parents’ sense of duty to educate their children. Home education should be the basis and preparation for school education. True piety, better Christian life can be hoped for only by beginning with the child. It is the duty of all parents to devote themselves to their children, and the neglect of this duty will be the heaviest sin. Children should be taught and led with reasonable words instead of blows and stripes. One must be an example to them by words, conduct, and life. They must be guarded from the weakness and effeminacy which comes through indulgence in worldly pleasures. Yet, on the other hand, asceticism in the education of children is to be avoided.

Home education, though fundamental, is not sufficient; for many parents lack the piety and learning, skill and art, time and means to enable them to lead their children; therefore we need schools and teachers. In his address to the magistrates and legislators, in which he urges them to establish and maintain Christian schools in each city for the education of all citizens regardless of rank and sex, Luther speaks as if he were proclaiming the oracle of God. He was obliged to speak because God opened his mouth, nay, God and Christ spoke through his mouth; education of youth was the fight against the devil; the cause of religion and education was one. He showed a high estimation of the teacher’s profession, saying:

“I tell you, in a word, that a diligent, devoted school-teacher, preceptor, or any person, no matter what is his title, who faithfully trains and teaches boys, can never receive an adequate reward, and no money is sufficient to pay the debt you owe him; so, too, said the pagan, Aristotle. Yet we treat them with contempt, as if they were of no account whatever; and all the time, we profess to be Christians. For my part, if I were compelled to leave off preaching and to enter some other vocation, I know not an office that would please me better than that of schoolmaster, or teacher of boys. For I am convinced that, next to preaching, this is the most useful, and greatly the best labor in all the world, and, in fact, I am sometimes in doubt which of the positions is the more honorable” (12: p. 414).

But turn your eyes upon the actual state of things, and see if schools and teachers are fulfilling their honorable missions. “Everywhere we have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves and could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even know how to learn and to teach” (5: p. 117).

Luther’s innovation in education was to liberate children from this strait-jacketness of instruction and discipline, and to bring in the air of freedom, cheerfulness, broad-mindedness, and respect for the child’s growing personality. “It is dangerous to isolate the young. It is necessary, on the contrary, to allow young people to hear, see, learn all sorts of things, while all the time observing the restraints and rules of honor. Enjoyment and recreation are as necessary for children as food and drink” (5: p. 119). The individuality of the child should be respected and nourished. “A child intimidated by bad treatment is irresolute in all he does. He who has trembled before his parents will tremble all his life at the sound of a leaf which rustles in the wind” (5: p. 119). As to the subject-matter of instruction, religion, classical languages and Hebrew, history, music, and mathematics should be taught. Luther speaks slightingly of the mediæval learning of philosophy as “the devil’s rubbish,” which was “acquired with too great cost, labor, and harm,” and wanted to substitute for it the study of history, conceived as the source of the real knowledge of the world. He attaches also a high importance to music, as a means of emotional culture, even saying that “unless a schoolmaster know how to sing, I think him of no account” (5: p. 119). “Knightly sport” is to be encouraged as a means of physical culture. To remedy “the greatest evil in every place”--i.e., the lack of teachers--he emphasizes the urgent need of special training for them. The best of the pupils, boys and girls, are to be selected, kept a longer time in school, given special instructors, and libraries opened for their use. The professional training of teachers as well as the education of the people is the duty of the authorities.

Thus the Reformation represented by Luther was no less an educational than a religious movement. It awakened a sense of the worth of the individual; the longing for the perfection of personality in its all-sidedness, intellectual, moral, and physical, was aroused. It stirred the parental and official conscience to educate children and citizens. Schools, which as an institution were, hitherto, only a part of the ecclesiastical system, and chiefly as a means of training servants of the Church, now sprang up as a coördinate agency in the upbuilding of humanity. The chief aim of the new education was not in behalf of the ecclesiastic interests, nor the soul’s concern for heaven or hell, but it was to furnish a city with “instructed, reasonable, honorable, and well-trained citizens,” in which its prosperity, safety, and strength lie. It was for the need of the world, “to the end that men may govern the country properly, and that women may properly bring up their children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their households” (5: p. 115). If the Renaissance idea of education was aristocratic, the Reformation idea is democratic; if the characteristic of the former was literary, that of the latter is civico-economical. Born the son of a miner, living the life of the people, Luther could not think with philologists that the humanities alone could meet the whole educational need of common citizens.

He says: “I by no means approve those schools where a child was accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or Alexander without learning anything. Another world has dawned, in which things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two occupations march side by side” (5: pp. 117-118). The religious conception of Church education, the humanistic ideal of the Renaissance, the military and civic training of knighthood, the industrial claim of the home and trade, all find recognition and reconciliation in Luther’s view, and are established as the four pillars on which the educational temple of modern Christian citizenship rests.

Fifteen years after the death of Luther the world received into its lap another gifted child, this time to work out reformation in the field of science. The Reformation together with Humanism restored the ideal of the total man. But their intellectual outlook was still chiefly limited to the attainments of the ancient world. Therefore, they soon degenerated into a new scholasticism on the one hand, and a linguistic formalism on the other. Then came Francis Bacon to preach the gospel of knowledge, of true knowledge. For this “father of English philosophers” the aim of knowledge “is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortune of the human race.” Indeed, “men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation, and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession” (2: p. 42). This abuse of learning was the greatest evil of the mediæval and Renaissance scholarship. The vocation of scholars is “to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men” (2: p. 42). Knowledge must generate, bear fruit; her function is to satisfy the needs of human life, to increase men’s control over Nature, and to enrich and ennoble his enjoyments. This can be attained not by a mere mastery of vain words and letters, or of tricks of the syllogism, but only by humble, diligent, and methodical inquiries into the great “volume of God’s works.” “Man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of Nature’s order in fact and thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails” (13: p. 48). The first-hand experience of living Nature and induction from it alone provide us real knowledge and truth, and nothing else. “It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works; since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render science active” (13: pp. 46-47). According to this standard of true knowledge, “all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion” (13: pp. 56-57). Our age is far older than that of the ancient people. Why should we bear the bondage of immature, inexperienced minds? “The wisdom which we have derived principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk, but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies, but barren of works” (13: p. 54). Turn your eyes from the antiquated record of the past to the infinite reality of living nature. The key to open its secret is in your hands. The sphere of conquest here is vast and inexhaustible; its pleasure is noble and insatiable. Thus rings out the scientific Sermon on the Mount. The real goal is shown, a broad new highway opened; science being vitalized by reunion with the infinite reality of living nature and the ever-progressive life of humanity marches to her never-ending conquest. Knowledge rescued from the depths of ignominy and impotence is raised to its heavenly seat; the ideal of omniscience, coupled with omnipotence, has ever since become the aspiration and motive power of the modern world. Although Bacon did not concern himself with the direct problems of education, a conception such as the above could not but introduce a new tendency into it. If we may call Luther the father of Protestant education, Bacon should be called the father of scientific education, both of which, when broadly interpreted, characterize the modern period of the Western education.

Bacon’s direct influence in the educational field naturally was to be exercised upon the higher institutions of learning. But the admittance of his ideas and spirit into them was a very slow and hard process. In the “advancement of learning” he advocated the founding of a real university, “left free to the arts and sciences at large,” devoted entirely to the free investigation and advancement of learning, without professional aim or any external restrictions. In the “New Atlantis,” his ideal state, an academy of science with its museum and laboratory, stands as the center. He also suggested a plan for the coöperation of all European universities. But the time was not ripe for all these ideas, nor have his visions yet been fully realized. A more immediate effect was the inspiration which his new gospel of learning and its principles have given to those through whom Europe first attained a definite theory of educational purpose and art, especially Comenius and Locke.

REFERENCES

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