The History of Education

The Making of a Discipline

Peter Gordon, R. Szreter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136224072
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume deals with the great changes which have taken place in the practice of the history of education in present years. It brings together a number of important articles on the subject which are not easily available to the ordinary reader.

1

The Study of the History of Education

Foster Watson

I

In the time of the Renascence the appeal to the old writers of Greece and of Rome on questions of education was as urgent as in all other directions of literary studies and of practical arts. Erasmus seeks the covering wing of Aristotle’s Politics or of Quintilian’s Institutes. Or to cite an English example, Sir Thomas Elyot grounds his educational studies on Quintilian and Plato. He requires his pupil to soak himself in these authors, and is of opinion ‘that those books be almost sufficient to make a perfect and excellent governor.’ In the time of Tudor absolutism, the education of the governor was of crucial importance. Unless he was trained to become noble, magnanimous, and the guardian of all the highest, humanistic interest, the kingdom might readily become a spoil for the despot, and a home-land of slaves. The best resource for the tutor who had the responsible charge of training the budding princes and governors, was to study and act upon the counsels of the old educational writers. So, too, thought Ascham. His cry was: Back to the aims of Cicero and the methods of Quintilian, if you wish the young noble and gentleman to be trained liberally and for nobility. The highest praise that could be given to the Father of modem pedagogy, Juan Luis Vives, was to style him the ‘second Quintilian’. It is needless to go through the list of the illustrious writers on Education of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No one in recalling them would fail to pause before the name of John Milton, whose devotion to the ideas of the ancients constitutes one of the classical instances of the appeal to educational history in English writers. ‘To govern well is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that!).’ It is the plea for magnanimity that draws Elyot, Ascham, and Milton to the old writers, or in other words leads them to commend the study of the great educationists. How could they show the regard due to the teacher better than by citing the ancient letter written by King Philip to Aristotle, to announce the birth of Alexander? Great as was his gladness in the birth of this son, Philip, he declared his joy was equally great that that son would have Aristotle as teacher. Thus was honoured in antiquity the function of the teacher. Thus educationists of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth centuries, gloried in recalling the dicta of the ancient writers, in magnifying the work of teachers, and in inspiring schoolmasters to the best efforts in accomplishing the task they had in hand of training noble youth.

It is true that such appeals to the history of education were largely by way of citation so as to point a moral or adorn a tale, educationally. The systematic treatment of educational history had not been developed, any more than the systematic treatment of any other kind of history. But the great solatium of the teacher when he suffered from the ‘unthankfulness’ of the parent and the pupil (of which Elyot, Ascham, and Brinsley most bitterly complain) was to fall back on the noble tradition of the schoolmaster’s function, guaranteed by the ‘schools of the prophets’ of old, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch amongst the Greeks, and especially Quintilian amongst Romans. We may say that the best humanistic work has rarely been done in literature or in art without the conscious background of great previous achievements and inspirations. It is sufficient surely to point out that literature today looks back to a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, even when it has ceased to study Homer, the Greek dramatists, and Virgil and the classical models generally. Even if the classical models are disregarded, their influence is not thereby excluded. Many modems prefer the ease of taking classical models second-hand. Yet the very greatest of modem writers, to whom the late generations owe unswerving allegiance, often themselves dipped deep into classical sources. The artists whether painters or musicians either look with reverential awe on ‘the old masters’, or at least study them before they superciliously pass them by. If the schoolmaster then wishes to regard his occupation as a ‘fine art’, is it not reasonable that he should carefully have examined ‘the Galleries of old Masters’ in the craft of education?

The way of approaching the study of the arts formerly was by precept-teaching. Precepts were given by old Galen and Hippocrates for medicine; farther back Solomon furnished his precepts for the practical life, so we should not be surprised that in the history of education earlier teaching of principles was by precepts, and that later educationists, in following the older thinkers, availed themselves of the method of citation of the precept-teaching educationists. Systematic educational theory in modem times was founded by Juan Luis Vives and by John Amos Comenius.

II

But alongside of the development of systematic educational theory proceeded the differentiation of the natural sciences, and for the same reason; since with Vives and Bacon set in the employment of the methods of observation and experiment, and the use of the inductive method in both the natural sciences and in education, Comenius then seized upon these methods as the basis of this theoretical treatment of education. The various natural sciences developed in every direction, especially after the formation of the Royal Society, until the time of Locke, when we find that as an educationist Locke trusts largely to ‘common sense’, and it is difficult to make out whether he had given any study to previous educationists at all. Locke strikes the modem keynote of the adverse critics of the study of educational history. ‘The extent of knowledge of things knowable is so vast, our duration here so short, and the entrance by which the knowledge of things gets into our understanding so narrow, that the whole time of our life is not enough to acquaint us with all those things, I will not say which we are capable of knowing, but which it would not only be convenient but very advantageous to know.’

The modem teacher, subjected to the constantly increasing demands of the governors, Local Authorities, the Board of Education, parents and public opinion, is a fortiori of Locke’s opinion, and outside pressure has increased in environmental power enormously since his time in the direction of limiting the teacher’s attention to present conditions only. Moreover, after Locke came Rousseau, and after Rousseau, the French Revolution. After the French Revolution, the whole emphasis of educational activity changed. The old classical ideals were broken up. The main educational stream flowed through the meadow-land of democracy. The methods and even the ideals were framed with a keen outlook towards the quantitative factor. The education of the masses became the absorbing theme in politics as well as in education. The old educationists were out of court. They had treated of high qualitative curricula and aims for the nobility. Elyot, Ascham, Milton and the rest were aristocrats in education. After the French Revolution, Lancaster, Bell, Robert Owen, Pestalozzi and the rest are keen democrats. The classics were doomed. The classical and even the historical spirit and atmosphere were, from the point of view of public educational leaders, obsolete. The appeal was not to the past, either to classical antiquity or to the Renascence educationists. The nineteenth century was an age of individualism, and as politics and religion came often to be regarded from the point of view of individualistic rationalism, so education developed along those lines, and reference to the historical side came to smack somewhat of an anachronism.

But philosophical radicalism might ignore all kinds of history, and regard all values as determined by the relation of the individual to his environment, easily ascertained by a process of trained visualisation or intuition; yet the advance of science increasingly pressed upon the notice of students the importance of the genetic method of the treatment of subjects. Geology, of itself, proved the necessity of the study of history on large and massive lines. ‘The history of a piece of coal’ showed the necessity of a wide reach of imagination to cover the meaning of the word ‘environment’. Consequently, largely from the very development of scientific conceptions, which formed the main sphere of intellectual energy in the earlier and middle parts of the nineteenth century, there arose the new scientific demand for the study of the historical side of humanistic subjects.

III

History has, therefore, come back again into the curricula of the universities and schools. It is realised in the outer world of nature that the slightest attempt to analyse the present state of an organism leads us to the past – for what is the past but the antecedent states of the parts which in their organised form now constitute the present? Thus there sprang up the idea that all human experience, in common with physical and biological phenomena generally, is accumulative, organic, continuous.

The late Professor Maitland said in 1901 that the attempt to teach history as a leading university study was ‘very new – some of those who watched its cradle are still amongst us, are still active, and still hopeful.’ It is not necessary here to detail the origin and progress of the university teaching of ancient history, of ecclesiastical history, of modem history, of economic history, of constitutional history, and of the history of political philosophy. Nor is it necessary to more than mention the lately established university teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. The History Schools in the Universities are firmly established, though so surprisingly new. The influence of the historical aspect of studies is much wider than the provision of facilities for the direct study of all the defined branches of historical science. Such new sciences as those of anthropology and sociology make appeal to historical researches. Comparative and historical Law have been illumined by the profound investigations of Professor Maitland and others, who have not only made many discoveries, and added to the body of knowledge of legal history, but have also developed new legal aims, new methods of legal study, and raised the subject still higher as a mental discipline. Slowly, too, the history of medicine is being developed, and a worker like the late Dr F.J. Payne has done much to prove the value of historical research in this direction. In the field of comparative and historical religion there is no need to elaborate illustrations. The publication of over sixty of the Sacred Books of the Religions of the East is a sufficient indication of the enormous erudition that is being brought to bear on the historical side of the study of Religion.

IV

The fact is that in all humanistic studies the search for knowledge has become strenuous on new historical lines to the point of making a new Renascence in all historical learning. It is recognised that truth, founded upon knowledge, is like a mountain-peak, accessible from many sides, and he knows the mountain best who has ascended it from many starting points. Historical studies, then, have won their way at the instigation of the permeating idea of evolution in all branches of science, as well as from their own inherent impetus. They have already served to elucidate not only the old humanistic subjects, where they have always been in evidence, but new whole tracts have developed into differentiated provinces of study: anthropology, sociology, economics, where the triumphs of the historical method are creating new sciences almost alongside natural sciences in rigour of aim and method.

What, then, is to be said of Education? Is it likely to be the only humanistic subject of study to stand outside of the historical treatment? Already we have seen that formerly it fell into rank with other subjects and made the usual citatory appeal to the ancients. Other subjects now have progressed, and enlarged their borders by other methods, and yet fall back upon the genetic, evolutionary, comparative, historical methods for complementary treatment, to their incalculable advantage. The whole round of methods has proved insufficient without the effort to collect and interpret systematically the accumulated experiences of the past. Is it probable on the face of things, or in view of the idea of the continuity of knowledge is it possible, that education stands in an entirely isolated position, and what was once a cherished method for its guidance, and what is now a most successful method in all other humanistic studies, is, for education, a superfluity and a pitfall? And, again, since the time of the French Revolution, having lost the habit of glancing its eye over the past – has not education exercised sufficiently its absorption in its immediate environment until it now needs the stimulus of historical study, so as to enlarge its vision and then to come back to itself, and duly recognise the perspective of its own achievements and prospects in the light of the past educational experience and progress of the ages? For the ‘eye sees not itself’.

V

It is argued that the training for a profession should concern itself with increasing technical skill, not with historical studies. Let us take the case of architecture. It may be suggested that there is no relevancy between the effective planning of an out-house at a minimum of expenditure, and the understanding by the designer of the way in which the builders of antiquity produced the massive works of engineering which are still a marvel of the world, or how the mediaeval builders built the great Cathedrals and Castles. The expenditure of time on the study of styles of architecture by the student who is to practise as an architect on a small scale and in common surroundings may seem wasted. But on the other hand the cultivation of knowledge by the articled pupil in architecture of the designs of the greatest masters of the craft, might, in time, lead not merely to the carrying out of humble commissions as a provincial architect, so as to suit the ignorance of conceptions on the part of his clientele, but the architect might contribute to the gradual uplifting of architectural design in its humblest applications amongst the public at large. It is desirable, therefore, in the public interest, that there should be professors of, and advanced research students in, architecture, who study past styles and stages of the development of architecture, and organise their knowledge as an art, in its relation to other arts, as well as to literature and to science. In fact, an excellent index of the position of architecture as a profession is afforded by the degree in which the general practitioner shares in the ascertained body of knowledge of his subject, and by the degree in which he performs his work in the light of this extended knowledge. Such skilled practitioners not only execute their work after ‘inner’ standards but also tend to raise the architectural tone of the community.

Similarly, whilst the professors and other investigators into the history of education have a distinct work to perform, the school teacher may reasonably be expected to emulate the professional eagerness of the architect by learning how to profit by the study of the ‘old masters’, and not only to teach his individual lessons or perform his other tasks by those rationalized methods which his theoretical and practical studies suggest to him, but also to realise that his professional status will be dependent largely upon the extent of the interest he has in the organized knowledge underlying the work, present and past, of education, over and above what he requires directly for application to the individual lessons. Actual individual power in any ordinary professional act is measured by the amount of knowledge and power in reserve. Hence the knowledge of the history of education contributes to the reserve-forces of the teacher. The acquisition of such knowledge is a mental discipline, as well as an addition to the storage of knowledge available for application at a given moment It is, of course, too much to expect the teacher to take an active, strenuous part in the investigation and research into the history of education. But the national organisation of education is clearly defective, if provision is not made somewhere in the national system, for the building up of a thorough body of knowledge of the history of education. This is an essential task, not only for the teachers, and for students of education, but also for the knowledge of history in general.

VI

Let me give an instance of the light thrown on general history by the study of educational history. King Henry VIII is often represented as a sort of escaped Oriental, absorbed in sensual self-seeking, whose intellectual outlook was casual and feeble. On this estimate, his discussions on Erasmus’s Free-will, and particularly his own answer to Luther in the Assertion of the Seven Sacraments can only be regarded as accidental, and Pope Leo X’s conferment of the title of Defensor Fidei must be regarded as a blatant piece of partisan recognition. But let us realise the fact that as King Henry VII trained his elder son Arthur with the humanistic learning such as Sir Thomas Elyot desiderated for the youth who was to become a ‘governor’, so the student age of Henry VIII was occupied in the preparation for ‘the mitre’. He was destined, we are told, to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and the possible eventual dignity of the Cardinalate, and who could tell? perchance the thoroughly ecclesiastically trained youth might reach the papal chair. Who does not see that the history of education in supplying the facts of the central idea of Henry VIII’s early training also provides the key to Henry VIII’s specialists knowledge of theology, his insight into the disputes of Lutheranism, and a familiarity with conditions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy which, in the circumstances of later history, paved the way for himself to the Royal Supremacy over the English Church; since his accession to the royal throne put out of court his assumption of the papal chair?

Then, again, the question will be raised: Granting the necessity of the study of the history of education as a part of general history – what is ‘the good’ of its study to the teacher? It will be objected that the subject- matter is unsuitable for the curriculum of a school, though on this point it may be recalled to mind that Milton advised the reading of an old book on education even by schoolboys. Innumerable hints and suggestions certainly are to be found in the past which might afford educational lessons for the present. Educational history, however, does not call for study because of the ‘tips’ to be obtained from it from application to present-day needs, either of the nation or the classroom.

VII

Yet in all questions of broad, decisive educational policy, the historical aspect is not a literary luxury; it is the categorical demand of a sound judgment. If we are to understand the so-called ‘religious’ question in connection with English primary education, we shall find that it is chiefly an historical question, emerging from the voluntary supply of many hundreds of primary ‘charity’ schools at the end of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries, chiefly by the Church of England. This supply was suddenly confronted, after the Industrial Revolution, with the demand for filling up by State organization the gaps in the national system. Finally, the different kinds of schools which have been found necessary for England – as supplied by the Church, by Undenominationalists, and by the State and other agencies – are so miscellaneous and satisfy such diverse needs that it is said, not without some ground for the statement, that the real solution of the educational problem can only be met by recognizing that there is no one system of education adaptable for England. Whether such a statement be true or not, and what the educational policy should be in view of English conditions, can only be determinable by careful study of the antecedent conditions which have been developing for several hundred years. The real depth of the citizen’s judgment on educational questons to-day can be gauged by the attention he has given to the origins and development of the various movements in evidence in the present education of England. So, too, we must realize that ‘each nation has to solve its educational problems in many directions in its own way’. But we must add ‘in accordance with its own history’. When we realize that France enters into the heritage of Romance traditions, founded upon the old Roman disciplines, language and civilisation, we see that the instinct of her best writers for refined, accurate style is no mere accident, but the outcome of countless generations of profound study of the classics, ingrained in the scholarship of generation after generation amid all the changes and development of language. The educational problems, therefore, of France or of Italy in relation to, say, the classics, are different from those of Germany or other Teutonic nations, because the national history is different. It is true such studies may not aid directly the individual class-lesson. But they will make the teacher a citizen of the great world whilst in his own province where, after all, it is a little disconcerting, if not humiliating, for him not to be at home.

We urge then that all educationists – the Minister of Education, the officials of the Board of Education, Inspectors of the Board, Directors of Education, ad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Study of the History of Education
• 2. The History of Education
• 3. A Plea for the Historical Study of English Education
• 4. The Place of the History of Education in Training Courses for Teachers
• 5. The History of Education
• 6. The Study of the History of Education
• 7. History and the Sociological Perspective in Educational Studies
• 8. The Historiography of Education
• 9. The Place of the History of Education in the Training of Teachers
• 10. The History of Education
• 11. The Study of the History of Education
• 12. Changing Perspectives in the History of Education
• 13. Aspects of Neglect: The Strange Case of Victorian Popular Education
• 14. A Possible Model for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Secondary Education in Europe
• 15. History as Propaganda: The Strange Uses of the History of Education