6
Introduction
In Italy, the rediscovery of many Greek and Latin texts had, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, been of some influence in changing attitudes and tastes in a variety of fields, not simply the literary In England and in other parts of Western Europe, there had also been indications of dissatisfaction with the religious establishment, including the Papacy, from at least as far back as John Wycliffe (1320-84) and the Lollards in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The effects of the Renaissance were enormous, and had a profound influence on the theory and practice of education at all levels. In this chapter we will examine Renaissance and Humanist ideas and show how they had an effect on education throughout Europe.
Ideas are, however, often generated or changed as a result of technological advances. In his discussion of the history of ideas, Tarnas1 stressed the importance of four inventions: the magnetic compass, the mechanical clock, gunpowder and printing. Narrowing the focus to educational ideas, in this chapter and the next we shall have many opportunities to mention the crucial role of the printing press.
The Renaissance and Humanist Thinking
It is important to think of the Renaissance not as an event but as a very gradual process. Some historians now locate the origins of the Renaissance as far back as the fourteenth century or even earlier. The Renaissance as the transition from the age of Faith to the age of Reason was only part of the education story. Similarly, Humanism involved more than the emergence of individualism, or the spirit of criticism challenging simple acceptance of doctrines and beliefs.
The term Renaissance is ambiguous and we should remember that it was not used until the eighteenth century. The origins of the Renaissance were associated with the rediscovery and revival of interest in classical
Greek and Latin texts:
Generally ... the Humanists are thought of as an army of scholars, untiring researchers, collectors of texts, whose historic merit consists essentially in having enriched and restored our knowledge of the Classical cultural heritage. If that had been all (and it was not) modern civilisation's debt to the Humanists would still be inestimable. Without their discoveries, and their recovery of the past, their work of restoration, the later developments of European culture would be unimaginable. It is enough to think how much the Humanists' introduction of the study of Greek philosophy has meant to modern culture. By way of the Greek scholars who were asked to come and teach in the Italian schools and academies from the time of the fall of Constantinople, the whole great heritage of Byzantine learning and philosophy ... became a part of Western culture.2
The transition to a new era effectively began when writers and artists started to transform the classical models into new forms and styles; for example, Petrarch (1304-74) unearthed the lost letters of Cicero which influenced the style of Petrarch's friend Boccaccio (1313-75). Moreover, the discovery of Cicero's letters stimulated Poggio Bracciolini and others to go on searching for more lost texts, and fortunately Poggio found Quintilian whose work on education influenced Erasmus and others discussed later in this chapter.
Many writers have stressed Renaissance achievements in art, architecture and sculpture, but the Renaissance was also significant for changing ideas - especially of the kind that cast doubt on traditional accepted truths or 'commonsense', for example, Machiavelli (1469-1527) in statecraft (political philosophy), or, later, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Galileo (1564-1642) in science. In his book on the Renaissance, J.H. Plumb put art into a wider cultural context, stressing also the availability of knowledge to a much wider readership:
Yet art was only one aspect of the brilliance of Renaissance Italy, which created an image of man, a vision of human excellence, that still lies at the heart of the Western tradition. Rarely achieved, it has nevertheless haunted men like a mirage. The Italians, particularly the Florentines, revered antiquity - its wisdom, its grace, its philosophy and its literature. Sensitive and deep-thinking men had done so, of course, ever since the Roman world had crumbled into decay; in monastic schools and universities Plato, as well as Aristotle, had been studied intensively. Yet such knowledge had been largely part of the private world of scholars. At the time of the Renaissance these humanistic studies spread through the upper and middle ranks of society and became a formidable part of the education of those who were to wield power and authority. The timely invention of the printing press not only multiplied the works of antiquity so that they were readily available to hundreds of thousands of men and women, but also helped to create a public for their study.3
Humanism and Education in Italy
Fifteenth-century Italy experienced a rise in prosperity and a generally increased demand for the educated and qualified. Universities failed to keep up with this demand, and most were extremely old-fashioned in what they offered. New schools were founded, often in the homes of scholars, where there was direct communication between teacher and student, and new material was taught. The word 'humanist' was in use as early as the fifteenth century (in Italian umanista from the Latin humanista) originally denoting a teacher of the humanities, but later in a broader way to include beliefs such as the uniqueness of human beings in possessing free will and power over nature. Some Humanists taught in universities, or as private tutors, others founded schools. One famous example was the Academy of Vittorino Rambaldone da Feltre at Mantua which set a pattern for the education of Italian aristocrats of both sexes that influenced many later writers such as Castiglione, Sir Thomas Elyot, Roger Ascham and Richard Mulcaster, all of whom contributed to new thinking about the content and methods of education.
The Transition from the Medieval Curriculum to Educating the Renaissance Man
Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) had established boarding schools in Padua and Venice before starting in 1423 his most celebrated academy in Mantua, La Casa Giocosa, the name of which ('the playful, or merry, house') was indicative of his pedagogic style - for example, practising mathematics by playing games. The trivium and quadrivium were not abandoned but were balanced by literature and philosophy, as well as by recreation and physical education; moral education pervaded the whole curriculum and everything studied was considered to have a positive moral influence on the learner. Plumb was in no doubt about Vittorino's importance:
Vittorino's ideas were to influence European education profoundly for centuries. He believed that education should concern itself with the body as well as the mind, with the senses as well as the spirit. Wrestling, fencing, swimming and riding alternated with hours devoted to Virgil, Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes. Luxury was eschewed, and Vittorino educated the poor with the rich. Nor was he prejudiced about the sexes; the Gonzaga princesses enjoyed the same extensive education as the princes. Above all, he encouraged the belief that individual greatness was part of the nature of man, and a desirable part, one that was in no way in opposition to the obligations which men had to their fellow men. To Vittorino the virtues were innate; they were human. Although a devout Christian and insistent on regular religious practices, he nevertheless cherished an optimistic view of man's capacities. Certainly in Lodovico, as in the great Federigo da Montefeltro, Vittorino found an apt pupil, and the traditions which he helped to create kept the Gonzaga from gross excesses and saved Mantua from the terrible sufferings which were so frequently the lot of other Italian cities.4
One of the most celebrated Italian writers on education was Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) who wrote II Cortegiano (The Courtier) between 1513 and 1518, although it was not published until 1528, It set out the requirements for an accomplished (educated) nobleman. The courtier had to know how to fight, play, dance and make love, as well as being well-versed in the Classics, poetry and oratory. II Cortegiano was quoted and copied throughout Europe, including Tudor England where it was translated by Sir Thomas Hoby and published as The Courtyer in 1561. Sir Philip Sidney was said to have taken a copy with him whenever he travelled.
For both da Feltre and Castiglione education was more than learning: it was 'breeding' (which was not the same as birth or blood, but was more like the English word 'upbringing'). Gentility was not a matter of correct conversation or clothes, what we might now call etiquette, it was, as J.H. Plumb has remarked, 'the whole being of man'. These qualities could be taught: suitable sports could give the body suppleness and grace. The gentleman must excel without seeming to do so: Castiglione talked of sperzatura or nonchalance (which survived into twentieth century England as the public school and Oxford man's 'effortless superiority').
Humanism and Education in France
The existence of the University of Paris, which was flourishing in the fifteenth century and developing a dynamic form of scholasticism, probably delayed the spread of Renaissance ideas in France. However, there were exceptions, and two of the early supporters of humanistic ideas were Rabelais and Montaigne.
Francois Rabelais (1495-1553) was probably the son of a lawyer who deposited Francois, aged nine, in a Franciscan community. Some years later Rabelais moved to the relative freedom of a Benedictine monastery; later still he changed again to become a secular priest and qualified as a physician. Rabelais' ideas on education owed something to Erasmus. Despite the enlightened kind of scholasticism being developed in Paris, Rabelais rebelled against it as well as criticising conventional education in schools. In his famous satire, La Vie très horrificque du grand Gargantua (Life of the Great Gargantua), Rabelais attacked teachers for packing Gargantua's mind with useless information and turning him into a well-informed fool rather than developing his reason; it required a massive purge to bring Gargantua back to humanity. Gargantua's father then criticised the kind of schooling which did nothing but practice memorising, and instead sought a tutor who would follow the Renaissance ideal of developing the whole person.
In describing Gargantua's curriculum, however, Rabelais depicts an almost impossible programme of work, so wide as to tax all but the most able. Rabelais goes one stage further, satirising the excesses of the new humanist education. When Gargantua prescribed a curriculum for his own son, Pantagruel, he lists Greek, Latin, Hebrew and also Chaldee and Arabic; these linguistic studies were supplemented by literature, music, athletics, nature study, art, manual work and the Bible, all intended to encourage Pantagruel to think for himself. Rabelais was presumably criticising a curriculum which was so packed with knowledge that the pupil would have no time to think. For Rabelais education meant liberation; in his Utopian Abbey of Theleme the freedom of pupils was a priority. They could follow their own interests, but they had been so imbued with a love of learning that no time was wasted.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) was writing a generation later than Rabelais, He shared many of his attitudes towards education, but not his satirical style of writing. Above all, he stood for tolerance in an age of increasing denominational strife, particularly the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century.
Montaigne was critical of the medieval pattern of education, but, like Rabelais, he was also wary of the excesses of some forms of Humanist education. He disliked the kind of education which concentrated on amassing knowledge: he said that as lamps are extinguished from too much oil, so is the mind from too much information. In his essay Du Pedantisme ('On Pedantry'), he said that too often teachers aimed at the wrong targets: Greek and Latin or prose and verse, when the aim should have been to encourage wisdom and virtue. His aims were spiritual freedom and independence of judgment. Montaigne agreed with the humanist idea of educating the whole person, body and mind. Understanding was more important than memorisation. Montaigne's Essais (1580-88) were widely read, especially in France and England. They included his reflections on education and his criticisms of pedantic excesses. Some of his ideas on education were taken up by Locke and Rousseau.
Humanism and Education in Northern Europe
Erasmus (1466-1536), a Dutch Humanist, brilliantly exemplified Renaissance thought spreading to the north-west of Europe. He studied in Paris in the 1490s and after 1499 paid a number of significant visits to England, for example, lecturing in Cambridge in 1511 and 1513. His edition of the New Testament in Greek (1516) provided an interesting link between Humanism and the Reformation. Study of the Greek version showed up errors of translation in the Latin Vulgate text which provided some support for those potential reformers who wished to claim that it was the Bible, not the Church or the Pope, which should be regarded as the authority in religion.
Erasmus also applied a similar critical attitude in a number of educational texts: De Ratione Studii (1511, On the Correct Method of Study); De Civilitate Morum Puerilium (1526, On the Politeness of Children's Manners); De Pueris Statim ac Liberalitur Instituendis (1529, On the Liberal Education of Boys). The study of Latin and Greek texts, with a concentration on the discussion of meaning, was the basis of Erasmus' educational programme, but he also advocated the critical study of good modern literature. Like other Humanist teachers he believed that pupils should enjoy learning and that it was part of the task of the teacher to know how to make the work interesting to individuals with different backgrounds. He apologised for mentioning this because he believed that Quintilian had already settled the issue.
John Colet (1467-1515) had travelled widely in France and Italy before becoming Dean of St Paul's Cathedral and founding St Paul's School in 1510 as a grammar school for about 150 boys, which rapidly became an influential centre for English Humanism. Colet encouraged more enlightened methods of learning Latin and Greek, which he considered to be essential; but he also introduced new methods of studying the Scriptures. He departed from the medieval search for mystical and allegorical meanings in the Bible and sought instead to use the Scriptures as a model for real life behaviour. Colet believed that the New Testament was the best guide for living a good life. In his school, which he financed out of his own fortune, Colet showed a very practical concern for such matters as cleanliness (many sixteenth-century schools were described as squalid, and disorderly) and he forbade such popular leisure pursuits as cock-fighting.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was perhaps the most famous of the English Humanists, probably best known for being executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII as Head of the Church. He had not been to Italy and did not stay long enough at Oxford to get a degree ( his father wanted him to study law instead); he was nevertheless a key figure in the development of Greek studies in England. He was careful to have his own son and three daughters educated according to the modern Renaissance methods, at home with selected tutors. In his Utopia (1516) he discussed pedagogy in the context of social and political change. There were some 'Utopian' rules in More's own household: gambling and idleness were not permitted; education was seen as a life-long process for male and female members; and everyone was expected to do some work in the garden. More was a close friend of Erasmus, and between 1515 and 1520 he strongly supported his programme of Greek studies as a basis for theological reform.
Sir Thomas Elyot (1490-1546) is best known for The Boke Named the Governour (1531) which was dedicated to Henry VIII. It was a programme designed for the upbringing and education of the sons of gentlemen. It was not very original from an educational point of view, but being written by someone who was an enthusiast for the English language, it made Renaissance ideas on education available to a wide readership.
Roger Ascharn (1515-68) also emphasised the importance of the English language, although as a teacher of Greek at Cambridge he did not neglect the Classics. The Scholemaster, published posthumously in 1570, introduced double translation as a method of teaching Latin and Greek. (Double translation meant starting with a text in the original language, translating it into English, and finally, after a suitable lapse of time, translating it back into Latin or Greek.) Like several other Humanist tracts, The Scholemaster touches upon the psychology of learning: Ascham was opposed to corporal punishment and advocated educating the whole person, accepting the Renaissance view that good literature had moral effects. He also shared the Renaissance enthusiasm for certain kinds of physical activities and he wrote a very famous book on archery, Toxophilus (1545). He was tutor to Elizabeth from 1548 to 1550 and Latin Secretary to the Queen until his death
Richard Mulcaster (1530-1611) is an excellent example of a schoolmaster who reflected on the educational practices of his day and theorised about education based on his own experience as well as on the writings of others. He was Master of the Merchant Taylors' School from 1561 to 1586, followed by 12 years as High Master of St Paul's. He changed the curriculum in both schools by adopting Humanist ideas and by including English language and literature. His two major educational publications were Positions, Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances be examined which are necessie [sic] for the Training up of Children either for Skill in their Boke or Health in their Bodie (1581); and The Elementarie which entreateth Cheeflie of the right writing of our English tung (1601). He stressed the need to recognise individual differences in children and to adjust teaching to meet their needs. Mulcaster wanted an efficient system of teacher education, comparable in status to that of doctors and lawyers. He saw school teaching not as a mechanical process of encouraging the memorisation of knowledge but of finding suitable experiences for all young people, including physical education, not only for boys but also for girls who should also be admitted to universities.
Another important Humanist influence was Joan Luis Vives (1492-1540), a Spaniard who spent most of his life elsewhere in Europe. He was greatly influenced by Erasmus but was also interested in popular education, and by no means despised practical education. Like Erasmus, he related teaching method to the psychology of the child and advocated individual programmes; he agreed with da Feltre and others in the psychological advantages of learning through playing games. He favoured a curriculum which balanced the classical and the modern, including the vernacular language. In 1523 Vives was invited to England to be the preceptor for the Princess Mary, and in the following years he lectured in philosophy at Oxford University. However, he offended Henry VIII by expressing sympathy with Catherine over the divorce issue, and had to leave the country.
The Renaissance Curriculum
In many of the examples mentioned above, views about education shifted away from a total concern for the medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) to a balanced programme of physical, intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development. Although it may be anachronistic to think of such clearly defined areas of experience at this stage, literature and music were thought to have moral purposes, as were physical activities of the right kind. The physical included fencing, riding, hunting, hawking and dancing; the intellectual focused on Greek and Latin texts but also on contemporary poetry and prose. The arts were also important, and it was regarded as desirable not only to appreciate music and painting but also, if possible, to be a performer.
However, the most important difference between Renaissance education and the medieval trivium and quadrivium was that in all aspects of the curriculum pupils were encouraged to understand and to exercise their critical faculties rather than emphasising memorisation. In addition, the Renaissance curriculum opened up a much wider range of literary styles and subject matter.
Schools in Sixteenth-Century England
We have seen that the Renaissance created demands for education throughout Europe. To what extent did schools in England match up to the new standards? As is so often the case, schools lagged behind: monastic, chantry and cathedral schools were inadequate both in terms of the numbers they catered for and in terms of the curriculum.
It has sometimes been suggested that the Reformation helped by diverting funds away from the monasteries to new grammar schools that were endowed by patrons who had benefited financially from the Reformation, particularly the dissolution of the monasteries. This may have been an example of Tudor propaganda. In his discussion of schools and the Reformation, R.H. Tawney has this to say:
As for the schools, what it did for them Mr Leach has told us. It swept them away wholesale in order to distribute their endowments among courtiers. There were probably more schools in proportion to the population at the end of the fifteenth century than there were in the middle of the nineteenth. 'These endowments were confiscated by the State and many still line the pockets of the descendants of the statesmen of the day...King Edward VI's Grammar Schools are the schools which King Edward VI did not destroy.'5
Unfortunately, this is a continuing argument. Lawson6 was even unkind enough to suggest that A.F. Leach, the author of English Schools at the Reformation 1546-8, was only guessing at the numbers. What seems clear is that by the fifteenth century monastic schools were not making any considerable contribution to education; chantry schools were much more important, and Edward VI was guilty of abolishing some of them. According to Lawson7 many of them were replaced by local, rather than royal, endowments. More will be said about the relation between the Reformation and schools in the next chapter. Meanwhile, it will suffice to report that the number of schools was inadequate for Renaissance requirements and that the Reformation did not solve the problem. Educational ideas were in advance of provision both before and after the Reformation.
Philosophy, Science and Education
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is better known as a statesman, philosopher and scientist than for his writing on education. However, he was interested in education partly because he disliked scholasticism in the universities and wanted to replace it with scientific studies and subjects concerned with the real world. In many respects Bacon might be better discussed in Chapter 7 because he was very 'post-Reformation' in his thinking; on the other hand, he was also a splendid example of Renaissance man statesman, lawyer, courtier, philosopher and writer on many subjects including science and education.
Bacon wanted to link science with experiences of the senses and recommended that the curriculum should include such practical subjects as modern languages and politics as well as history and literature. Above all he thought that science was neglected in schools and universities. One of his enduring beliefs was that science should harness nature for the benefit of mankind. Aristotle and scholastic education had exaggerated the value of the deductive method of logic and neglected the inductive. Bacon became the champion of the empirical method consisting of systematic observation, testing by experimentation and then generalising from particular examples to principles or laws of nature - in other words, the inductive process.
He believed that this kind of scientific method should be applied to human beings as well as to the world of nature, for which reason he has sometimes been regarded as a forerunner of sociology. One of the ways in which he suggested we could benefit by looking more closely at human behaviour was his work on what he referred to as the four 'idols'. These idols, Bacon claimed, hindered the mind in its search for truth. He began with 'idols of the tribe' (traditional thought or local superstitions) which were shared by the whole of humanity in various ways: they were human limitations of reasoning which made all human beings prone to error, for example, a tendency to seek greater order in the world than really exists or to generalise on the basis of inadequate observation. At the other extreme, Bacon discussed 'idols of the cave', an individual's distorted perception because he thinks his 'cave' is the whole world, by which he meant individual bad habits of thinking and reasoning, personal prejudices which encouraged individuals to make bad judgements or reach false conclusions; a tendency for human beings to make generalisations from their own point of view, ignoring more general evidence. In between the universal and the individual idols were two other kinds. 'Idols of the market-place', language and social interaction, referred to the misunderstandings which arose out of using language, for example, using words and phrases carelessly, and words which were invented for the nonexistent. Finally, Bacon spoke of idols of the theatre (dogmatic 'fairy stories' used to explain the world), fallacious modes of thinking perhaps derived from false philosophies, such as scholasticism.
Bacon also thought that the educational experiences of the young should be geared to their future status: schools should educate future statesmen and men of action as well as clerics and scholars. Bacon condemned many of the writers discussed earlier in this chapter. Whilst he criticised scholasticism and the version of Aristotle's logic still being taught in universities, he was equally dismissive of the learned debates about the new theology which only led to further argument. He also disliked the 'new learning' of humanism because it failed in something which Bacon regarded as all-important - the advancement of learning by concentrating on the past rather than the future. Bacon was convinced that progress in education depended on much greater attention being paid to scientific observation and experimentation, and correspondingly less time being spent on classical texts and theological disputes. Some of his ideas were taken up, as we shall see in Chapter 7, by post-Reformation educationists.
Conclusion
The term 'Renaissance man' or 'Renaissance woman' is still used to convey the idea of a well-balanced individual whose knowledge is wide but not too specialised. In practice, however, there has been a growing tendency, especially in England, to encourage young people to specialise early and to think of themselves as 'arts' or 'science'. This may be only a temporary deviation from the Renaissance ideal or a reformulated version of it.
One generalisation which has surfaced several times in this chapter was the tendency for writers on education to prefer understanding and critical thinking to mere memorisation of canonical texts. Such ideas did not originate in the Renaissance but, as we have seen in earlier chapters, went back at least as far as Quintilian. These ideas would continue to be advocated, and challenged, throughout the next five centuries. Another recurring theme was the need for teachers to treat their pupils as individuals: a precept that was easier to preach than to practise in schools where there was always a tendency to teach the whole class using the same method and expecting all pupils to learn at more or less the same speed. Finally, especially with Bacon, we see education being placed in a much wider context: not just the preparation of monks, priests and clerks, but the intellectual and practical education of a much greater proportion of the population.
References
1. R. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind (Random House, 1991), p, 225.
2. G, Procacci, History of the Italian People (Pelican, 1973), p. 102.
3. J.H. Plumb, The Penguin Book of the Renaissance (Penguin, 1964), p. 25.
4. Ibid,, pp. 46-7.
5. R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Pelican, 1926), p. 136.
6. J. Lawson, Medieval Education and the Reformation (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 70.
7. Ibid., p. 81.
Further Reading
Compayré, G., The History of Pedagogy (Swann, Sonnenschein. 1905).
Eby, F., The Development of Modern Education (Prentice-Hall, New York, 1952).
Hale, J.R., Renaissance Europe (Fontana, 1971).
Leach, A.F., English Schools at the Reformation 1546-8 (Russell, New York, 1968).
Simon, J., The Social Origins of English Education (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970).