Chapter XVIII: Theory and Practice by the Middle of the Eighteenth Century (2)

many children never achieved anything beyond a little reading and
knowing a few things by heart.... The instruction in reading was never
anything else but a torture, protracted through years, from saying the
alphabet and formation of syllables to the deciphering of complete
words, without any real success in the end, while writing was nothing
but a wearisome tracing of the letters, the net result of all the toil
being the gabbling of the Catechism and a few Bible texts and hymns,
learned over and over again.

The imparting of information by the teacher to a class, or a class discussion of a topic, were almost unknown. Hearing lessons, assigning new tasks, setting copies, making quill pens, dictating sums, and imposing order completely absorbed the time and the attention of the teacher.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. The discipline everywhere was severe. "A boy has a back; when you hit it he understands," was a favorite pedagogical maxim of the time. Whipping-posts were sometimes set up in the schoolroom, and practically all pictures of the schoolmasters of the time show a bundle of switches near at hand. Boys in the Latin grammar schools were flogged for petty offenses (R. 245). The ability to impose order on a poorly taught and, in consequence, an unruly school was always an important requisite of the schoolmaster. A Swabian schoolmaster, Häuberle by name, with characteristic Teutonic attention to details, has left on record [23] that, in the course of his fifty-one years and seven months as a teacher he had, by a moderate computation, given 911,527 blows with a cane, 124,010 blows with a rod, 20,989 blows and raps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows over the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, 1,115,800 raps on the head, and 22,763 _notabenes_ with the Bible, Catechism, singing book, and grammar. He had 777 times made boys kneel on peas, 613 times on a triangular piece of wood, had made 3001 wear the jackass, and 1707 hold the rod up, not to mention various more unusual punishments he had contrived on the spur of the occasion. Of the blows with the cane, 800,000 were for Latin words; of the rod 76,000 were for texts from the Bible or verses from the singing book. He also had about 3000 expressions to scold with, two thirds of which were native to the German tongue and the remainder his invention.

Another illustration of German school discipline, of many that might be cited, was the reform work of Johann Ernest Christian Haun, who was appointed, in 1783, as inspector of schools in the once famous Gotha (p. 317). Due to warfare and neglect the schools there had fallen into disrepute. Haun drove the incapable teachers from the work, and for a time restored the schools to something of their earlier importance. Among other reforms it is recorded that he forbade teachers to put irons around the boys' necks, to cover them with mud, to make them kneel on peas, or to brutally beat them. Diesterweg (R. 244) describes similar punishments as characteristic of eighteenth-century German schools. The eighteenth- century German schoolmaster shown in Fig. 142 was probably a good sample of his class.

Pedagogical writers of the time uniformly complain of the severe discipline of the schools, and the literature of the period abounds in allusions to the prevailing harshness of the school discipline. A few writers condemn, but most approve heartily of the use of the rod. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" had for long been a well-grounded pedagogical doctrine. Among many literary extracts that might be cited illustrating this belief, the following poem by the English poet Crabbe (1754-1832) is interesting. He puts the following words into the mouth of his early schoolmaster:

Students like horses on the road,
Must be well lashed before they take the load;
They may be willing for a time to run,
But you must whip them ere the work be done;
To tell a boy, that if he will improve,
His friends will praise him, and his parents love,
Is doing nothing--he has not a doubt
But they will love him, nay, applaud without;
Let no fond sire a boy's ambition trust,
To make him study, let him learn he must.

CONDITIONS SURROUNDING CHILDHOOD. It is difficult for us of today to re- create in imagination the pitiful life-conditions which surrounded children a century and a half ago. Often the lot of the children of the poor, who then constituted the great bulk of all children, was little less than slavery. Wretchedly poor, dirty, unkempt, hard-worked, beaten about, knowing strong drink early, illiterate, often vicious--their lot was a sad one. For the children of the poor there were few, if any, educational opportunities. Writing on the subject David Salmon says: [24]

The imagination of the twentieth century cannot fathom the poverty of
the eighteenth. The great development of mines and manufactures, which
has brought ease and independence within the reach of industrious
labour everywhere, had hardly begun; employment was so scarce and
intermittent, and wages were so low, that the working classes lived in
hovels, dressed in rags, and were familiar with the pangs of hunger;
while those who were forced to look to the rates for hovels, rags, and
food sufficient to maintain a miserable life numbered a sixth of the
whole population.

In the towns children were apprenticed out early in life, and for long hours of daily labor. Child welfare was almost entirely neglected, children were cuffed about and beaten at their work, juvenile delinquency was a common condition, child mortality was heavy, and ignorance was the rule. Schools generally were pay institutions or a charity, and not a birthright, and usually existed only for the middle and lower-middle classes in the population who were attendants at the churches and could afford to pay a little for the schooling given. Reading and religion were usually the only free subjects. Only in the New England Colonies, where the beginnings of town and colony school systems were evident, and in a few of the German States where state control was beginning to be exercised, was a better condition to be found.

Among the middle and upper social classes, particularly on the continent of Europe, a stiff artificiality everywhere prevailed. Children were dressed and treated as miniature adults, the normal activities of childhood were suppressed, and the natural interests and emotions of children found little opportunity for expression. Wearing powdered and braided hair, long gold-braided coats, embroidered waistcoats, cockaded hats, and swords, boys were treated more as adults than as children. Girls, too, with their long dresses, hoops, powdered hair, rouged faces, and demure manner, were trained in a, for children, most unnatural manner. [25]

The dancing master for their manners and graces, and the religious instructor to develop in them the ability to read and to go through a largely meaningless ceremonial, were the chief guides for the period of their childhood.

SCHOOL SUPPORT. No uniform plan, in any country, had as yet been evolved for even the meager support which the schools of the time received. The Latin grammar schools were in nearly all cases supported by the income from old "foundations" and from students' fees, with here and there some state aid. The new elementary vernacular schools, though, had had assigned to them few old foundations upon which to draw for maintenance, and in consequence support for elementary schools had to be built up from new sources, and this required time.

In England the Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166), it will be remembered (p. 324), had laid a heavy hand on the schools by driving all Dissenters from positions in them, and the Five Mile Act of 1665 had borne even more severely on the teachers in the schools of the Dissenters. Fortunately for elementary education in England, however, the English courts, in 1670, had decided in a test case that the teacher in an elementary school could not be deprived of his position by failure of the bishop to license him, if he were a nominee of the founder or the lay patron of the school. The result of this decision was that, between 1660 and 1730, 905 endowed elementary schools were founded in England, and 72 others previously founded had their endowments increased. The number continued to increase throughout the eighteenth century, and by 1842 had reached a total of 2194. These new foundations probably gave the best schooling of the time, and tended to stir the Established Church to action. Accordingly we find that during the eighteenth century the vestries of the different church parishes began the creation of parish elementary schools for the children of the poor of the parish, supporting a teacher for them out of the parish rates, and without specific legal authorization to do so. These new parish schools also contributed somewhat to the provision of elementary education, and mark the beginning of the church "voluntary schools" which were such a characteristic feature of nineteenth-century English education. We thus have, in England, endowed elementary schools, parish schools, dame schools, private-adventure schools of many types, and charity-schools, all existing side by side, and drawing such support as they could from endowment funds, parish rates, church tithes, subscriptions, and tuition fees. The support of schools by subscription lists (R. 240) was a very common proceeding. Education in England, more than in any other Protestant land, early came to be regarded as a benevolence which the State was under no obligation to support. Only workhouse schools were provided for by the general taxation of all property.

In the Netherlands and in German lands church funds, town funds, and tuition fees were the chief means of support, though here and there some prince had provided for something approaching state support for the schools of his little principality. Frederick the Great had ordered schools established generally (1763) and had decreed the compulsory attendance of children (R. 274), but he had depended largely on church funds and tuition fees (§7) for maintenance, with a proviso that the tuition of poor and orphaned children should be paid from "any funds of the church or town, that the schoolmaster may get his income" (§8). In Scotland the church parish school was the prevailing type. In France the religious societies (p. 345) provided nearly all the elementary vernacular religious education that was obtainable.

In the Dutch Provinces, in the New England Colonies, and in some of the minor German States, we find the clearest examples of the beginnings of state control and maintenance of elementary schools--something destined to grow rapidly and in the nineteenth century take over the school from the Church and maintain it as a function of the State. The Prussian kings early made grants of land and money for endowment funds and support, and state aid was ordered granted by Maria Theresa for Austria (R. 274 a), in 1774. In the New England Colonies the separation of the school from the Church, and the beginnings of state support and control of education, found perhaps their earliest and clearest exemplification. In the other Colonies the lottery was much used (R. 246) to raise funds for schools, while church tithes, subscription lists, and school societies after the English pattern also helped in many places to start and support a school or schools.

Only by some such means was it possible in the eighteenth century that the children of the poor could ever enjoy any opportunities for education. The parents of the poor children, themselves uneducated, could hardly be expected to provide what they had never come to appreciate themselves. On the other hand, few of the well-to-do classes felt under any obligation to provide education for children not their own. There was as yet no realization that the diffusion of education contributed to the welfare of the State, or that the ignorance of the masses might be in any way a public peril. This attitude is well shown for England by the fact that not a single law relating to the education of the people, aside from workhouse schools, was enacted by Parliament during the whole of the eighteenth century. The same was true of France until the coming of the Revolution. It is to a few of the German States and to the American Colonies that we must turn for the beginnings of legislation directing school support. This we shall describe more in detail in later chapters.

THE LATIN SECONDARY SCHOOL. The great progress made in education during the eighteenth century, nevertheless, was in elementary education. Concerning the secondary schools and the universities there is little to add to what has previously been said. During this century the secondary school, outside of German lands, remained largely stationary. Having become formal and lifeless in its teaching (p. 283), and in England and France crushed by religious-uniformity legislation, the Latin grammar school of England and the surviving colleges in France practically ceased to exert any influence on the national life. The Jesuit schools, which once had afforded the best secondary education in Europe, had so declined in usefulness everywhere that they were about to be driven from all lands. The Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166) had dealt the grammar schools of England a heavy blow, and the eighteenth century found them in a most wretched condition, with few scholars, and their endowments shamefully abused. The Law of 1662, says Montmorency, "involved such a peering into the lives of schoolmasters, such a course of inquisitorial folly, that the position became intolerable. Men would not become schoolmasters.... Education had no meaning when none but political and religious hypocrites were allowed to teach.... National education was destroyed." and the grammar schools of England were "practically withdrawn during more than two centuries (1662-1870) from the national life." [26]

In German lands the old Latin schools continued largely unchanged until near the middle of the eighteenth century, with Latin, taught as it had been for a century or more, as the chief subject of study. Shortly after the coming of Frederick the Great to the throne (1740) the Latin schools of Prussia, and after them the Latin schools in other German States, were reorganized and given a new life. The influence of Francke's school at Halle (p. 418), and the new types of teaching developed there and by his followers elsewhere, began to be felt. German, French, and mathematics were given recognition, and some science work was here and there introduced. Above all, though, Greek now attained to the place of first importance in the reorganized Latin schools.

It was not until after 1740 that the German people awakened to the possibility of an independent national life. Then, under the new impulse toward nationality, French influence and manners were thrown off, German literature attained its Golden Age, the _Ritterakademieen_ (p. 405) were discarded, and a number of the German Principalities and States revised their school regulations and erected, out of the old Latin schools, a series of humanistic _gymnasia_ in which the study of Greek life and culture occupied the foremost place. New methods in classical study were thought out and applied, and a new pedagogical purpose--culture and discipline--was given to the regenerated Latin schools. A new Renaissance, in a way, took place in German lands, [27] and a knowledge of Greek was proclaimed by German university and gymnasial teachers as indispensable to a liberal education with an earnestness of conviction not exceeded by Battista Guarino (p. 268) four centuries before. To know Greek and to have some familiarity with Greek literature and history now came to be regarded as necessary to the highest culture, [28] and a pedagogical theory for such study was erected, based on the discipline of the mind, [29] which dominated the German classical school throughout the entire nineteenth century. It was in the eighteenth century also that the German States began the development of the scientific secondary school (_Realschule_), see p. 420, as described in a preceding chapter.

RISE OF THE ACADEMY IN AMERICA. As we have seen (p. 361), the English Latin grammar school was early (1635) carried to New England, and set up there and elsewhere in the Colonies, but after the close of the seventeenth century its continued maintenance was something of a struggle. Particularly in the central and southern colonies, where commercial demands early made themselves felt, the tendency was to teach more practical subjects. This tendency led to the evolution, about the middle of the eighteenth century, of the distinctively American Academy, with a more practical curriculum, and by the close of the century it was rapidly superseding the older Latin grammar school. Franklin's Academy at Philadelphia, which began instruction in 1751, and which later evolved into the University of Pennsylvania, was probably the first American Academy. The first in Massachusetts was founded in 1761, and by 1800 there were seventeen in Massachusetts alone. The great period of academy development was the first half of the nineteenth century. The Phillips Academy, at Andover, Massachusetts, founded in 1788, reveals clearly the newer purpose of these American secondary schools. The foundation grant of this school gives the purpose to be:

to lay the foundation of a public free school or ACADEMY for the
purposes of instructing Youth, not only in English and Latin Grammar,
Writing, Arithmetic, and those Sciences wherein they are commonly
taught; but more especially to learn them the GREAT END AND REAL
BUSINESS OF LIVING ... it is again declared that the _first_ and
_principle_ object of this Institution is the promotion of TRUE
PIETY and VIRTUE; the _second_, instruction in the English,
Latin, and Greek Languages, together with Writing, Arithmetic, Music,
and the Art of Speaking; the _third_, practical Geometry,
Logic, and Geography; and the _fourth_, such other liberal Arts
and Sciences or Languages, as opportunity and ability may hereafter
admit, and as the TRUSTEES shall direct.

Though still deeply religious, these new schools usually were free from denominationalism. Though retaining the study of Latin, they made most of new subjects of more practical value. A study of real things rather than words about things, and a new emphasis on native English and on science were prominent features of their work. They were also usually open to girls, as well as boys,--an innovation in secondary education before almost wholly unknown. Many were organized later for girls only. These institutions were the precursors of the American public high school, itself a type of the most democratic institution for secondary education the world has ever known.

THE UNIVERSITIES. The condition of the universities by the middle of the eighteenth century we traced in the preceding chapter. They had lost their earlier importance as institutions of learning, but in a few places the sciences were slowly gaining a foothold, and in German lands we noted the appearance of the first two modern universities--institutions destined deeply to influence subsequent university development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.

END OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD. We have now reached, in our study of the history of educational progress, the end of the transition period which marked the change in thinking from mediaeval to modern attitudes. The period was ushered in with the beginnings of the Revival of Learning in Italy in the fourteenth century, and it may fittingly close about the middle of the eighteenth.

We now stand on the threshold of a new era in world history. The same questioning spirit that animated the scholars of the Revival of Learning, now full-grown and become bold and self-confident, is about to be applied to affairs of politics and government, and we are soon to see absolutism and mediaeval attitudes in both Church and State questioned and overthrown. New political theories are to be advanced, and the divine right of the people is to be asserted and established in England, the American Colonies, and in France, and ultimately, early in the twentieth century, we are to witness the final overthrow of the divine-right-of- kings idea and a world-wide sweep of the democratic spirit. A new human and political theory as to education is to be evolved; the school is to be taken over from the Church, vastly expanded in scope, and made a constructive instrument of the State; and the wonderful nineteenth century is to witness a degree of human, scientific, political, and educational progress not seen before in all the days from the time of the Crusades to the opening of the nineteenth century. It is to this wonderful new era in world history that we now turn.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Contrast a religious elementary school, with the Catechism as its chief textbook, with a modern public elementary school.

2. Contrast the elementary schools of Mulcaster and Comenius.

3. To what extent did the religious teachings of the time support Locke's ideas as to the disciplinary conception of education?

4. Do we to-day place as much emphasis on habit formation as did Locke? On character? On good breeding?

5. State some of the reasons for the noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory as to education, in Protestant lands, by the middle of the eighteenth century.

6. How do you explain the slow evolution of the elementary teacher into a position of some importance? Is the evolution still in process? Illustrate.

7. What were the motives behind the organization of the religious charity- schools?

8. Show how tax-supported workhouse schools represented, for England, the first step in public-school maintenance.

9. Show that teaching under the individual method of instruction was school keeping, rather than school teaching.

10. How do you explain the general prevalence of harsh discipline well into the nineteenth century?

11. Did any other country have, in the eighteenth century, so mixed a type of elementary education as did England? Why was it so badly mixed there?

12. Show how the English Act of Conformity, of 1662, stifled the English Latin grammar schools.

13. What reasons were there for the development of the more practical Academy in America, rather than in England?

14. Compare the American Academy with the German _Realschule_.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections, illustrative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

226. Mulcaster: Table of Contents of his _Positions_.
227. Locke: On the Teaching of Latin.
228. Locke: On the Bible as a Reading Book.
229. Coote-Dilworth: Two early "Spelling Books."
230. Webster: Description of Pre-Revolutionary Schools.
231. Raumer: Teachers in Gotha in 1741.
232. Raumer: An 18th Century Swedish People's School.
233. Raumer: Schools of Frankfurt-am-Main during the Eighteenth Century.
234. Krüsi: A Swiss Teacher's Examination in 1793.
235. Crabbe; White; Shenstone: The English Dame School described.
236. Newburgh: A Parochial-School Teacher's Agreement.
237. Saint Anne: Beginnings of an English Charity School.
238. Regulations: Charity-School Organization and Instruction.
(a) Qualifications for the Master.
(b) Purpose and Instruction.
239. Allen and McClure: Textbooks used in English Charity-Schools.
240. England: A Charity-School Subscription Form.
241. Southwark: The Charity-School of Saint John's Parish.
242. Gorsham: An Eighteenth-Century Indenture of Apprenticeship.
243. Indenture: Learning the Trade of a Schoolmaster.
244. Diesterweg: The Schools of Germany before Pestalozzi.
245. England: Free School Rules, 1734.
246. Murray: A New Jersey School Lottery.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. State the main points in Mulcaster's scheme (226) for education.

2. Characterize Locke's criticism (227) on the teaching of Latin.

3. State Locke's ideas as to the use of the Bible (228).

4. Characterize the nature and contents of the so-called "Spellers" by Coote and Dilworth (229).

5. Compare the Connecticut common school, as described by Webster (230), with an English charity-school (238 b), or a Swedish popular school (232) of the time.

6. Just what state of vernacular education in Teutonic lands is indicated by the three selections (231, 232, 233)?

7. Compare the proprietary right of the teachers at Frankfort (233) with the right of control claimed over song schools by the Precentor of a mediaeval cathedral (83).

8. Do such conditions as Krüsi describes (234) exist anywhere to day?

9. Characterize the Dame School of England, as to instruction and control, from the descriptions given in the selections (235) reproduced.

10. State the relationship of teacher and minister at Newburgh (236), and indicate the nature and probable extent of his income.

11. State the purpose of the founders of Saint Anne of Soho (237), and characterize the type of school they created.

12. What does the qualification for a charity-school teacher (238 a) indicate as to the nature of the teacher's calling in such schools? Outline the instruction (238 b) in such a school.

13. What instruction did the textbooks as printed (239) provide for?

14. Show the voluntary and benevolent character of the charity-school by comparing the subscription form (240) with some voluntary subscription form used to day.

15. How did the school in Saint John's parish (241) differ from apprenticeship training?

16. What changes do you note between the mediaeval Indenture of Apprenticeship (99) and the eighteenth-century English form (242)?

17. Compare Readings 201 and 242 on apprenticeship.

18. Compare conditions described in 244 with 231-233.

19. What do the Free School Rules of 1734 (245) indicate as to duties and discipline?

20. What does the use of the lottery for school support (246) indicate as to the conception and scope of education at the time?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Allen, W. O. B., and McClure, E. _Two Hundred Years; History of the
S.P.C.K., 1698-1808_.
Barnard, Henry. _English Pedagogy_, Part II, The Teacher in English
Literature.
* Birchenough, C. _History of Elementary Education in England and
Wales_.
Brown, E. E. _The Making of our Middle Schools_.
Cardwell, J. F. _The Story of a Charity School_.
Davidson, Thos. _Rousseau_.
* Earle, Alice M. _Child Life in Colonial Days_.
Field, Mrs. E. M. _The Child and his Book_.
Ford, Paul L. _The New England Primer_.
Godfrey, Elizabeth. _English Children in the Olden Time_.
* Johnson, Clifton. _Old Time Schools and School Books_.
* Kemp, W. W. _The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts_.
Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial New
York_.
Locke, John. _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ (1693).
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _Progress of Education in England_.
Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _State Intervention in English
Education_.
Mulcaster, Richard. _Positions_. (London, 1581.)
* Paulsen, Friedrich. _German Education, Past and Present_.
* Salmon, David. "The Education of the Poor in the Eighteenth Century";
reprinted from the _Educational Record_. (London, 1908.)
* Scott, J. F. _Historic Essays on Apprenticeship and Vocational
Education_. (Ann Arbor, 1914.)

PART IV

MODERN TIMES

THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY A NEW THEORY FOR EDUCATION EVOLVED THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL