Part 5

It was during the period of scholasticism that universities, in imitation of the trade guilds of the time, sprung up in different parts of Europe, particularly in Spain, Italy, France, and England. To the famous schools both in England and on the Continent scholars flocked from all parts, and their instruction presented little difficulty, as Latin, the language in which the instruction was given, was the common language of scholars in Western Europe. The establishment of universities in different countries was a sign rather than a cause or result of that intellectual and spiritual awakening which, after nearly a thousand years of almost complete stagnation, manifested itself among the peoples of Europe.

It is usual to date the Renaissance from 1453, the fall of Constantinople; but it must not be forgotten that owing to the clash between East and West, the struggle between Christianity and Mohammedanism (the Crusades, as these religious wars were called), there had from the end of the eleventh century been a considerable change of outlook among the nations of Western Europe. This was specially the case in Italy, where city states, not unlike those of Greece in their character, had sprung up, and where, as in Greece in the time of Pericles, there had been the great outburst of literary activity which is associated with the names of Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch. In Northern and Western Europe the intelligence stimulated by the new learning was directed towards the improvement of the method of study. All study was linguistic. Latin was the instrument of common intercourse; Greek and Hebrew were sacred as the tongues in which the Scriptures had been conveyed; it was no wonder, therefore, that the humanistic education was almost entirely confined to the study of languages. Sturm (1507 to 1589) drew up a scheme of studies which had long a great influence on the school courses of instruction throughout Europe.

The reaction against authority which marked the Reformation period was specially noted for the reaction against the purely verbal education given to the young, whose education, as we learn from Locke, was calculated to teach them "not to believe, but to dispute", and to fit them "for the university, not for the world". On the Continent Rabelais (1483 to 1533) led this realistic movement, which was continued by Montaigne (1533 to 1592) in France, and under the influence of Bacon by Brinsley and Hoole in England, and Ratke and Comenius on the Continent. Up to this time the chief English writers on the subject of education had been Sir Thomas Elyot in his _Governour_, Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_, and Richard Mulcaster in his _Positions_.

The intellectual activity which marked in England the closing decades of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century saw the issue of Milton's _Tractate_, one of the most famous books on education ever produced. The _Tractate_ discusses only the kind of education that should be given to gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, so that it is strictly limited in its application, as it does not deal with the education of the people, nor with the education of women. The ideal which Milton put before him as the aim of "a complete and generous education" was "to fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war". Milton in his _Tractate_ discusses studies, exercise, and diet, showing that he clearly understood that education was concerned with the body as well as the mind and spirit.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century Locke, an English physician and philosopher, published (1693) his _Thoughts concerning Education_, a book which influenced immensely the character and direction of future educational studies. As he informs his readers in his letter to Edward Clarke, he counsels everyone "after having well examined and distinguished what fancy, custom, or reason advises in the case ... to promote everywhere that way of training up youth ... which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings". He begins his essay with the statement, "A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world", and the suggestions he makes as to the physical, moral, and intellectual training of the young are for the most part sound. He decried a too severe discipline, maintaining that "If the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children, ... they lose all their vigour and industry". On the other hand, he held that if you "Remove hope and fear, there is an end of all discipline"; and he held that, as far as possible, "Childish actions are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained". He applied the science of psychology to the study of child nature, and of the methods to be employed in training it; and so prepared the way for the modern methods of education. "Interest is the secret of Herbart", according to one of his devoted admirers. Locke seems to have anticipated this when he declares that "None of the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden to them, or imposed on them as a task".

Though his attitude towards the universe was utterly opposed to the attitude of Locke, Rousseau drew almost all that was practical in his scheme for the education of the young from the English writer. Rousseau's work, though largely inspired by Locke, was essentially of a revolutionary kind. It held that man is the great corrupter; that "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Creator; and that man's handling makes everything worse". In effect he said, leave the child as much as possible alone. An attempt constantly to direct him can only result in stupefying him. It is true we receive our education from nature, from men, and from things; but nature must be our guide in determining the use of the other two. As few restraints as possible must be imposed on the child, and the use of books should be prohibited. For the child there should be "no other book but the world", and "no other instruction but facts". The child's education he divides into four stages, infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth. The first two stages last till the beginning of the thirteenth year, when the boy is supposed to be fit for instruction. From such instruction the teaching of words must disappear, and the teaching of things must take its place. The subjects most suitable for instruction were, Rousseau declared, measuring, drawing, geometry, speaking, and singing. Books, he declares, are useless, are, indeed, altogether harmful. The method he advocates is the method of self-teaching and the use of the senses, which Rousseau held would work to the profit of the intelligence. The child's knowledge should rest on his own observation, and not on belief in authority, and each child should be taught a manual trade.

At fifteen, according to Rousseau, real education begins; and it is the duty of the teacher to study the subject he has to act upon, in other words, to discover the nature of the pupil, which must in all cases determine the means and the method employed in his education. Two things must be taught. These are the true relations, racial and individual, that exist among men; and how to direct and control the emotions aroused by the environment so that the best results may arise. Here he finds occasion for the use of moral teaching and for instruction in religion. The facts of history must be placed before him; but he must be left to form his own judgment. He is now to be taught religion as a help to the regulation of the passions; but not the religion of any particular sect. His time is to be given up largely to reading and to the acquirement of taste; to the study of history and eloquence; and to attendance at the theatre.

The revolutionary doctrines preached by Rousseau in his _['E]mile_ and in his other educational works had an immense effect on the Continent, and particularly on the work of one of his most ardent admirers, the Swiss farmer and schoolmaster Pestalozzi, an eccentric, dubbed by his schoolfellows "Harry Oddity of Fools-town". Thinking the education demanded for ['E]mile by Rousseau vastly superior to that which he himself received, he very early became an ardent admirer of the system advocated by the French philosopher, and an eager reformer. _['E]mile_ and the _Contrat Social_ were condemned by the magistrates of Zurich, and Pestalozzi and some of his fellow-students were imprisoned for the _Memorial_ in which they defended these works. Later Pestalozzi determined to be a farmer. He was married at the age of twenty-three, and started growing madder and vegetables on some poor land near Zurich. On the land he built for himself a house, the _Neuhof_.

In the winter of 1774 he hit upon the expedient of taking into his house some twenty poor children of the neighbourhood, whom he treated as his own. They worked with him in summer in the fields, and in winter in the house. Improved health for the children, increased intelligence, and a manifest devotion to their benefactor were some of the results speedily displayed, and the experiment drew much attention to itself. Urged on by his love for the children, Pestalozzi took in a larger number, and in a very short time found himself bankrupt. In this period of seeming disaster Pestalozzi turned author. The books which he produced were greedily read on the Continent, and aroused the greatest interest. After some work at Stanz and at Burgdorf, Pestalozzi settled to work in the castle of Yverdun on Lake Neuch[^a]tel, which became in the early years of the nineteenth century a place of pilgrimage for European students and lovers of education. Forced to leave Yverdun in 1815, he continued his work at Clindy till 1824.

Friedrich Froebel spent the years 1807 to 1809 at Yverdun, and so fitted himself to carry on the work Pestalozzi had to some extent made popular. His name, however, is specially associated with the schools for very young children to which he gave the name of _Kindergarten_, that is, 'gardens of children', places where young children, like young plants, were properly watched and tended. For the children in these schools their employment was to be play, play from which and by which they acquired clear notions regarding themselves and their environment. "Education", he asserted, "should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God." He held that powers were developed by exercise; that failure to use any part of the body or mind led to the shrinkage of the part, and sometimes even to its complete loss. He held that if we wish to develop the body we must exercise the body, and that, similarly, if we wish to develop the intellect or the emotions they must be exercised. He insists that teachers must be careful to interfere as little as possible; must remember at all times that the aim of teaching is "to bring ever more and more out of man rather than to put more and more into him". He based his system on action; agreed with Montaigne that "children's games were their most serious occupations"; and with Locke that "All the plays and diversions of children should be directed towards good and useful habits". Froebel was not the founder of infant schools. These were first established on the Continent and in Britain with the object of helping mothers. In Britain their establishment is associated with the names of the educational enthusiasts James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin.

Nearly ten years before Froebel's stay with Pestalozzi at Yverdun, Herbart, next to Kant and Hegel the most influential of German philosophers, visited the inspired educationist at Burgdorf, and found him employing methods based on the principles which he himself had worked out in his psychology. To both it was clear that there is a definite order in which subjects should be taught to the children, and that this order is determined, not merely by the relation of the subjects to each other, but by their power of satisfying the growing wants and capacities of the child. Pestalozzi had arrived intuitively at a method, and had practically applied it, which Herbart had scientifically worked out as applicable to the whole educational field. Three years later Herbart published pamphlets on Pestalozzi's best-known book, _How Gertrude teaches her Children_, and on _The A.B.C. of Sense-perception_, and in these showed what weight he attached to observation as an instrument of education. Two years later he published one of his most notable works on education, _The Aesthetic Revelation of the World_, and in 1806 _General Pedagogy_. In 1809 he was appointed professor of philosophy at K[:o]nigsberg, where he remained till 1833, and where his services to the cause of education, both by his writings and by his establishment of normal schools and experimental schools, cannot be exaggerated. He warns teachers not to educate too much; to be careful not to destroy the individuality of the child, such individuality being that which characterizes individuals of the same class. He lays the greatest stress on the importance to the teacher of child study, maintaining that he will be unable to teach unless he knows the child as he is. For Herbart the aim of education is summed up in morality, "the highest aim of humanity and consequently of education", itself. "I have no conception", he writes, "of education without instruction, just as I do not acknowledge any instruction that does not educate." "Instruction", he says elsewhere, "will form the circle of thought, and education the character; the last is nothing without the first." A great deal, according to Herbart, depends upon the pupil himself, who "grasps rightly what is natural to him", and who must be saved from the tendency to one-sidedness in which following his bent would result, by the cultivation in him of many-sidedness. This cultivation involves the control of the pupil's mental activity, and the instrument for this control is interest, which causes the pupil's complete absorption in its object. For the attainment of this Herbart proposes certain formal steps of instruction. These steps are usually set forth as (1) Preparation, (2) Presentation, (3) Comparison, (4) Generalization, (5) Application.

The nineteenth century was a period of continuously increasing interest in education, and of a generally growing belief in its utility. It was taken up by the Governments of the different countries, and ordered and regulated almost out of existence. Seven years before the death of Pestalozzi the first public grant for education was made by the British Parliament, and from that time up to the present the Government has continued to extend its power over the education of the country. For a long time the Government in Britain was satisfied to subsidize elementary education; but later it insisted on hard-and-fast lines of instruction. So thoroughly were these regulated in most countries that a French Minister of Education could boast he was able to say what work every child in France was engaged in at that particular moment.

In Britain it was only bit by bit, and with very considerable reluctance, that the Government took upon itself the responsibility for the education of the country. In Scotland a national system of general education, constituted in 1560, remained in force until reconstructed by the _Education Act_ of 1872. (See _Scotland_.) Compulsory education was introduced into England in 1870, together with what was described as payment by results; and, for some time, the aim which the teacher had to keep before him was the production at the annual examination of the largest number of pupils who could satisfy the tests in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, or, as they were called, the 'three R's', and so earn the Government grant. For between thirty and forty years this unnatural and mechanical system remained in force. From 1864 onwards Commission after Commission sought to reduce English secondary education to order. The most notable of these was The Bryce Commission of Enquiry into Secondary Education, 1894-5, whose recommendations have since been put into force by legislation. One of the results of the increasing interest in education throughout England was the founding, early in the latter half of last century, of great day schools, like the City of London, St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors, in London and other large cities; and, after the passing of the Education Act of 1902, the establishment everywhere of Council Secondary Schools.

Of the immense number of works on education issued during the last half of the nineteenth century, perhaps the best known are those of Herbert Spencer and of Professor Bain. The former seeks to explain education from the Darwinian standpoint, and the latter to determine from psychology the intellectual value of the various subjects taught in school, and the average age at which they should be taught to children. Of practical English educators during the nineteenth century, the most outstanding names are undoubtedly those of Arnold of Rugby, Thring of Uppingham, and Abbott of the City of London School.

In recent times the advances made in the theoretical and practical studies of the sciences of anthropology, physiology, and psychology have exercised an enormous influence on educational theories and practices. Careful observations of young children by scientific observers like Darwin, Dearborn, and Preyer have added greatly to our knowledge of child-nature; and helped to suggest new methods of studying it and developing it. The result has been the promulgation within the present century of a number of educational methods, some of which, in contrast to the older practices, must seem almost revolutionary. Among these must be remembered the 'Heuristic Method' of teaching science put forward by Professor H. E. Armstrong. The object of the method is to put the student as completely as may be in the position of an original investigator; and it has been classed by writers on education as being, like so many other modern methods, a 'play method'. Froebel in his kindergarten was one of the first to introduce successfully the play method in education, and the 'gifts' by which the plan was carried through were of his own devising; but such cannot be said of Dr. Montessori, whose method of education engrosses so much attention at the present time. The Montessori apparatus was originally devised by Dr. Seguin for the instruction of mental defectives. Dr. Montessori used the apparatus first for the training of young children; but the cardinal feature of the Montessori system is the determined effort to make the child entirely responsible for his own education, and to interfere as little as possible with his development. The apparatus is so contrived that it can only be used in one way if the problem is to be solved; so the child is forced to attend to the differences in size and shape and carefully to compare the different pieces. In addition, the Montessori system attempts to cultivate the social virtues; teaches the children to live and to work and play with others, and so to learn to be well-mannered. The teacher in this system retires into the background, and the children are left to go their own way, to choose their own tasks, and to be their own critics. Great attention is also given to the physical development of the children.

Experimental education has been attempted both in Germany, where the need for it was first put forward by Kant, and in England; but it is in the United States of America that the chief advances in this direction have been made. There the Binet attempt to measure the intelligence of the child, to fix in fact a metric scale of intelligence, has been elaborated, and the Binet-Simon system of tests devised, and later modified by L. M. Terman. There, too, schools have been established which have tried the working out of what may be described as the non-interference with the pupil principle. Among these may be mentioned the 'George Junior Republic' and the Gary Schools. The latter, we are told by their founder, were "not instituted to turn out good workers for the steel company, but for the educational value of the work they involved". To this must be added the 'Dalton Laboratory Plan', tried lately as an experiment by Miss Helen Parkhurst in a public secondary day school in Dalton. By this plan, the time-table is abolished, the child undertakes to get up a certain amount of work each month in each particular subject, and is left free to distribute his time as he chooses, so that he can devote more time to those subjects in which he is backward. The school is divided into departments (laboratories) each under a specialist who gives the help needed, but leaves the pupil to himself as much as possible.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bartley, _The Schools for the People_; Norwood and Hope, _Higher Education of Boys in England_; Quick, _Essays on Educational Reformers_; Browning, _An Introduction to the History of Education Theories_; Sleight, _Educational Values and Methods_; Nunn, _Education: Its Data and First Principles_; Wilton, _What do we mean by Education?_ _The New Teaching_, edited by Adams; Kerr, _Scottish Education_; Morrison, _Education Authorities' Handbook_; Dewey, _Schools of To-morrow_; Rusk, _Introduction to Experimental Education_; Montessori, _The Montessori Method_ and _The Advanced Montessori Method_.

EDUCATION ACT, the name given to several Acts dealing with education in Great Britain. Among the principal Education Acts are: (1) that of 1870, which introduced compulsory education; (2) that of 1891, which reduced, or in some cases abolished, school fees; (3) that of 1902, which authorized the levying of an education rate; and (4) that of 1918, which raised the age for leaving school, and made education compulsory up to the age of eighteen by means of continuation schools. Pupils must attend these schools for 320 hours each year.

EDWARD, known as _the Elder_, King of England, son of Alfred the Great, born about 870, died in 925. He succeeded his father in 901, and his reign was distinguished by successes over the Danes. He fortified many inland towns, acquired dominion over Northumbria and East Anglia, and subdued several of the Welsh tribes.

EDWARD, surnamed _the Martyr_, King of England, succeeded his father, Edgar, at the age of fifteen, in 975. His reign of four years was chiefly distinguished by ecclesiastical disputes. He was treacherously slain in 979 by a servant of his stepmother, at her residence, Corfe Castle. The pity caused by his innocence and misfortune induced the people to regard him as a martyr.

EDWARD, King of England, surnamed _the Confessor_, was the son of Ethelred II, and was born at Islip, in Oxfordshire, about 1004. On the death of his maternal brother, Hardicanute the Dane, in 1041, he was called to the throne, and thus renewed the Saxon line. Edward was a weak and superstitious, but well-intentioned prince, who acquired the love of his subjects by his monkish sanctity and care in the administration of justice. His queen was the daughter of Godwin, Earl of Kent. He died in 1066, and was succeeded by Harold, the son of Godwin. Edward caused a body of laws to be compiled from those of Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred, to which the nation was long fondly attached. He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161.