CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 1356. The Seven 1309-1377 Baby- 1387-1417 The Electors estab lished by charter. 1350 1500. Hansa League. Paulus Vergerius est. in law courts. 1349-1420 1365. U. Vienna f. 1384. School at Great Schism. 1384. Breth. Com. Life f. Lorenzo Valla 1414. Council of Vittorino da Feltra 1378 1446 1407-1457 Constance. Leonardo Bruni 1418. Council of Cosimo de Medic 1369-1444 Basle Pico da Mirandola 1415 John Huss Daventer founded. 1386. U. Heidelberg f. 1387. Winchester f. 1389-1446 1440. Eton founded. Wessel 1420-1495 1455. First book Hegius 1420 1495 printed. the Platonic Thomas à Kempis Battista Guarino 1458. Greek taught 1494 Charles VIII Raphael of Roses. Isabella of Spain Vinci 1452-1519 1452-1498 of France in 1485-1520 Luther 1483 1546 1520. Magellan 1457-1536 1517. Luther's circumnavigates Michael Angelo Theses. the globe 1475-1564 1521. Diet at Peasants' Ariosto 1474 1533 Worms. Copernicus 1535 Suppression of monasteries 1509-1547 Tycho-Brahe in England. 1533. Reb. of 1546 1601 1540. Jesuit Geneva. Shakespeare Order founded. Edward VI 1564-1616 1538 English Act 1547-1553 Kepler 1571-1630 of Supremacy. Henry VIII Elizabeth 1473-1543 1545-1563 Coun Zwingli 1484-1531 1533 1592 German Cities Knox 1505-1572 Peter Ramus 1526. Melanchthon Calvin 1509-1564 1515-1572 opens gymnasium 1542. Inquisition Michael Neander at Nuremberg. introduced. 1553. Servetus burned. 1525-1595 1528. Saxony 1571. Ascham's School Plan. 531. Elyot's School founded. Governour, 1540. Jesuit order f first work in Eng 1559 Würtemberg on education. School Plan: first sys. of Pub Sch 1531-1611 1599. Final form of Mulcaster Mulcaster's Positions 1581 Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. CHAPTER VI THE RENAISSANCE AND HUMANISTIC EDUCATION What the Renaissance Was.-The Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought radical changes in educational practice similar to those in the intellectual life. The view of education which found no worthy aims or interest in this life except as they were connected as a preparation directly with the life to come, which looked upon schooling as a discipline merely introductory to this greater discipline of life, which limited instruction to the training of the mind in a few activities and those not the highest, gave way during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to a conception of education entirely different. This new view contained the germs of all modern educational development. As the appropriate subject-matter of education, the new education opposed to the old a radically different interpretation of Greek philosophy. It rejected the metaphysics of Aristotle in favor of his physics; it exalted Plato above Aristotle and found a place for the literature of the Romans and of the Greeks as expressive of the best that is in man, in humanity, and in nature. In its method the new absolutely rejected that attitude of mind characteristic of the old, which drew authoritative deductions and hence all knowledge from conceptions which, though they might be established by ecclesiastical authority or scholastic traditions, were mere assumptions. In its form the new education declined to express itself in or be bound by the stiff, formal, and even crude Latin of the Church and of the school, but aspired to the freedom, the expressiveness, and the beauty of classical literature. The new conception of education resulted from a profound social change, the causes of which were numerous and farreaching. The logically perfect systems of education which dominated the Middle Ages, whether for the monk, the cleric, or the secular leader, were unstable because of their very perfection. In their completeness they permitted no change, no progress; they made no provision for the individual. While the monastic life furnished a moral discipline, it provided for no progressive application in life of power when developed, since the monk was separated from the world; hence the tendency to fall away from higher ideals and the inability of such standards to meet developing needs. The perfected system of chivalry gave no place to the common man that could be tolerated for long, nor did it offer possibility of attainment to nor require obligations from the higher classes that could be satisfactory even for a time. Scholasticism had constructed an elaborate and perfected system of thought which fettered the intellect, though from its subjectmatter such glimpses of freedom were gained as together with the power gained from the intellectual activity were soon to prove instrumental in bringing about its overthrow. These structures of thought, erected with so much labor as palaces in which to dwell, proved to be but prisons; and as the architects completed the edifice, those for whom they were designed overthrew what they saw to be symbols of their slavery. Yet from the débris of these edifices the succeeding generation laid the foundations of the structure of modern thought. The completion of the Crusade movement in the fourteenth century saw the destruction of the contentment of the people under the rigid system of scholastic thought and the perfected control of ecclesiastical organization; the universities stimulated the zeal for the intellectual life; the growing cities, with their industries and their commerce, furnished the opportunity for the development of those economic interests which are fundamental in modern life and for the accumulation of that wealth and power which was to reproduce, at least in north Italy, the city states of the classic type of Greece; the invention of gunpowder made it possible for the common man to challenge the power of any authority dependent on physical prowess; while the printing press opened up the treasures of Greek and Roman thought and achievement to every one seeking light and truth. Thus the unity of medieval thought, as the historical development of the time reveals to have been the case with the similar unity of life, ultimately broke up into the multiple interests and activities characteristic of modern times. Thought lost its unified or corporate character. Education ceased to find its aim in such an adjustment of the individual into a perfected scheme of thought and action that he lost his individuality and found expression only through the institutionalized whole. In place of this there developed in the greatest variety of forms that individualism which is so characteristic of the early Renaissance, and which renders it difficult to express either the intellectual traits or the educational practices of that period in terms other than those of personal characteristics. The extreme individualism remained typical only of the earlier period and soon crystallized itself socially into movements, and educationally into types of schools. Though the activities of the Renaissance were most varied, they may be summed up in three general tendencies, representing three great interests almost unknown during the Middle Ages, and opening up to the student three worlds or aspects of life that had for many centuries remained almost unknown. The first of these new worlds was the real life of the past, the life of the ancient Greeks and Romans who had possessed infinitely more varied interests, and consequently a wider knowledge of life and of its possibilities than had the people of the Middle Ages. The classic ages had expressed this interest by means of a literature and an art incomparably superior to any produced during the intervening centuries, — centuries which had been not so much ignorant of as indifferent to them. The second of these worlds was the subjective one, the world of emotions,—of the joy of living, of the contemplative pleasures and satisfactions of this life, of the appreciation of the beautiful: an interest in introspective observation and analysis, from the æsthetic and human rather than from the philosophical and religious point of view. The means to such a world as this is through the fullest participation in activities and interests of the life around one; the purpose of such a study is self-culture and improvement; the result of it is literature and art. Of this world medieval thought had been wholly ignorant. The third of these worlds was that of nature around them, a realm not only unknown to the people of the medieval centuries, but considered ignoble and debasing in its influence on man. The first of these great world discoveries led to a wider and more intensive study of the Latin and Greek languages; to a devotion to the classic literature of both languages; to a search for the manuscript remains of this literature until this quest had brought to light substantially all that we possess to-day; to a passion for the collection of these manuscripts, consequently to their multiplication, and finally through the discovery of printing to their general dissemination. The mistake should not be made, however, of confusing the means of this Renaissance with its cause or with its end. The recovery of the classical literature was not the cause, for that, as we have noticed, lies far deeper and more remote in the whole movement of history and of thought. Nor was it the purpose of the Renaissance, even in the case of the few notable leaders such as Petrarch, who were possessed by a consuming passion for the recovery of the works of the ancients. These books were merely means to that culture, that advancement in knowledge and breadth of view and |