CHAPTER XVII

THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS THE Readings contained in this chapter illustrate the application of the new scientific method to the theory and practice of the school, and show the influence exerted by it upon education. Before the eighteenth century this was not large, as the schools remained centers for the preservation of orthodoxy, and conservatively clung to religious instruction as their chief work. Still, some beginnings of importance were made, and these the Readings of this chapter have been selected to illustrate.

The influence of the new thinking manifested itself in three different stages, classified as:

1. Humanistic realism; that is, the attempt so to study the classics as to obtain useful knowledge from them.

2. Social realism, which largely rejected the learning of the schools as pedantic, and erected an ideal for the education of a gentleman in the affairs of the world by means of the new modern languages, studies, and travel.

3. Sense realism, which tried to turn the instruction in the schools to a study of real things, and the teaching of useful information.

Rabelais and Milton stand as examples of the first stage. The selection from Rabelais (210) shows him in sympathy with the best ideas of the age, though prudence compelled him to write as a clown and a fool. The two extracts from Milton give first (211) his statement of the new civic-religious aim of education, and second (212) the program of study he would follow to impart useful knowledge.

Social realism represents the reaction of the nobility and landed gentry against the education of the time. The selection from Adamson (213) states well the reasons for the discontent of these classes with the existing schools. Montaigne and Locke stand as the two most important exemplars of social realism. Both wrote at some length on the education of a gentleman's son, and the three extracts (214, 215, 216) serve well to give the point of view of each. Locke also later wrote an important report on the

workhouse education of pauper children. His plan (217) was thoroughly typical of English practices, and can be read almost as well in connection with the English attitude as described in chapter XIII or chapter XVIII.

The great exponent of sense realism as applied to education was the Moravian teacher and bishop, Johann Amos Comenius. He was the dominating educational thinker of the seventeenth century, as well as one of the great figures in the history of all education. In a large volume entitled The Great Didactic he attempted an organization of the aim, purpose, principles, method, and desirable scope of education, and of this the title-page (218) and table of contents (219) are reproduced. To show still better the very modern character of his ideas, his plan for the organization of a gymnasium, outlined for the authorities at Saros-Patak, in Hungary (1650-54), is reproduced (220) in abbreviated form. Compared with the schools of his contemporaries in Europe this was modern in the extreme.

For the schools Comenius wrote a series of textbooks, by means of which the pupil learned not only Latin by a far better method, but also learned about the world of things besides. These textbooks were highly realistic in character. The introductory book, a primer and first reader known as the Orbis Pictus, was celebrated for two centuries and was translated into almost all languages. To show the character of this first illustrated schoolbook, a few sample pages, from three different editions of it, are reproduced (221). The commanding position of Comenius in the history of education has been well summed up by President Butler, from whose notable address a brief extract (222) is taken.

The attempt to introduce the new scientific studies into the schools made but slow headway. In the elementary schools little was done before the nineteenth century, and the same was largely true of the secondary schools, outside of Teutonic lands. In Germany a notable development came in the early establishment of realschulen, the need for which is set forth in the extract from Gesner (223). In the universities the new scientific learning obtained but little hearing before about the beginning of the eighteenth century. One of the early centers for mathematical and scientific studies was the University of Cambridge, concerning which two selections are introduced. One is a small handbill, under date of 1693 (225), in which an instructor offers to give

certain scientific and mathematical courses privately; and the other is a scheme of study (224), printed in 1707, in which the mathematical and scientific courses then offered are listed.

210. Rabelais on the Nature of Education

(Rabelais, François, Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel, book II, chap. VIII; trans. by Urquhart. London, 1890)

François Rabelais was a French monk, curé, physician, and university scholar who was out of touch with his times, and who keenly satirized the medieval follies and formalism of his age. In a satirical story of a giant and the education of his son, which he called the Life of Gargantua (1535) and the Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel (1533), he has given us, under the form of a letter from the giant to his son, his ideas as to the character of the education he thought desirable. This letter classifies Rabelais as a humanistic realist, in sympathy with the best ideas of the scholars of the Italian Renaissance. After a long introduction, the letter concludes as follows:

My dear son: ... Thou art at Paris, where the laudable examples of many brave men may stir up thy mind to gallant actions, and hast likewise for thy tutor and pedagogue the learned Epistemon, who by his lively and vocal arguments may instruct thee in the arts and sci

ences.

I intend, and will have it so, that thou learn the languages perfectly; first of all, the Greek, as Quintilian will have it; secondly, the Latin;

and then the Hebrew, for the Holy Scripturesake; and then the Chaldee and Arabic likewise, and that thou frame thy style in Greek in imitation of Plato; and for the Latin, after Cicero. Let there be no history which thou shalt not have ready in thy memory; - unto the prosecuting of which design, books of cosmography will be very conducible, and help thee much. Of the liberal arts of geometry, arithmetic, and music, I gave thee some taste when thou wert yet little, and not above five or six years old. Proceed further in them, and learn the remainder if thou canst. As for astronomy, study all the rules thereof. Let pass, nevertheless, the divining and judicial astrology, and the arts of Lullius, as being nothing else but plain abuses and vanities. As for the civil law, of that I would have thee to know the fair texts by heart, and then to confer them with philosophy.

Now, in the matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, I would have thee study that exactly; that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain, of which thou dost not know the fishes; all the fowls of the air; all the several kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forest or orchards; all the sorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground; all the various metals that are hid within the bowels of the earth; together with all the diversity of precious stones, that are to be seen in the orient and south parts of the world. Let nothing of all these be hidden from thee. Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss, and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succor and protect them at all their needs, against the invasion and assaults of evil-doers.

Furthermore I will that very shortly thou try how much thou hast profited, which thou canst not better do, than by maintaining publicly theses and conclusions in all arts, against all persons whatsoever, and by haunting the company of learned men, both at Paris and otherwhere. ... Reverence thy preceptors: shun the conversation of those whom thou desirest not to resemble; and receive not in vain the graces which God hath bestowed upon thee. And, when thou shalt see that thou hast attained to all the knowledge that is to be acquired in that part, return unto me, that I may see thee, and give thee my blessing before I die. My son, the peace and grace of our Lord be with thee, Amen. Thy Father

From Utopia, the 17th day of the month of March

GARGANTUA

211. Milton's Statement of the Aim and Purpose of Education (John Milton, Tractate on Education. London, ed. of 1673)

John Milton (1608-74), the English poet and friend of humanity, science, and education, published, in 1644, a little book of twenty-three pages which he called a Tractate on Education. In it he defined education, both as to aim and means and scope, as follows:

The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents. by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love

him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.

But because our understanding cannot in this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching.

And seeing every Nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kinds of Learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the Languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after Wisdom; so that Language is but the Instrument conveying to us things usefull to be known.

And though a Linguist should pride himself to have all the Tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the Words & Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteem'd a learned man, as any Yeoman or Tradesman competently wise in his Mother Dialect only. . . .

I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.

212. Milton's Program for Study

(John Milton, Tractate on Education. London, ed. of 1673)

In the Tractate Milton outlines his ideas as to the content of a humanistic-realistic course of instruction for "noble and gentle youth," covering the years from twelve to twenty-one, as follows:

...

For their Studies, First they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good Grammar, either that now us'd (Lily's), or any better.... Next to make them expert in the usefullest points of Grammar, some easie and delightful Book of Education would be read to them; whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses. But in Latin we have none of classic authority extant, except the two or three first Books of Quintilian, and some select pieces elsewhere. . . . At the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught to them the rules of Arithmetick, and soon after the Elements of Geometry even playing, as the old manner was. After evening repast, till bed-time their thoughts will be best taken up in the easie grounds of Religion, and the story of the Scriptures.

The next step (13 to 16) would be to the Authors of Agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella, for the matter is most easie, and if the language be difficult, so much the better, it is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be an occasion of inciting and inabling them