Schooling from Medieval to Tudor times.

'We children beg you, teacher, to show us how to speak Latin correctly...We would rather be flogged for the sake of learning than be ignorant...I am by profession a monk, and every day I sing seven hour services with the brethren and am occupied with reading and writing'
    Aelfric's Colloquy.  A.S. Cook and C.B. Tinker, Select translations from Old English prose, 1908.

This is a glimpse of an Anglo-Saxon schoolboy.  Until the Renaissance, monastic schools would have been the source of scholarly education.  The pattern of boys;' education was more or less the same all over Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  Most schools were run by the Church and varied considerably in size and standards.  A common expression of piety was the founding of chantries, small chapels with a resident priest paid to say prayers for the benefactor.  Such an endowment often included free schooling for poor scholars.  Many chantry priests also supplemented their generally small incomes by taking paying pupils. These small schools would teach basic reading and writing skills to children under the age of seven.  For many this was all the instruction they would receive, or need, to fit them for their working lives.
More advanced education was provided for boys by the grammar schools which cannon law required every cathedral to maintain after 1300 AD.

In addition to the Church schools, many secular schools were endowed both by individuals and by townsmen's guilds.  Some of these schools in England eventually becoming exclusive public schools.  A certain number of places were traditionally reserved for the free education of the poor. Some which continue to offer these scholarships today are  the King Edward VI grammar schools, founded by Edward VI, son of Henry VIII.

Edward VI, (1537-1553) Guillim Scrots, Guys & St.Thomas's Charity.

The grammar school curriculum and teaching methods were, before the invention of printing, largely dictated by lack of books.  There was an enormous emphasis on learning by heart and oral work, and also on the importance of rhetoric, logic and disputations.  This probably led to the students being very articulate. Even after the invention of printing books were scarce and precious and education remained mainly oral.

But the Renaissance had enormous and far-reaching effect on what was taught.  The re-discovery of classical texts led to a widening of the school curriculum to cover many new subjects.
Henry VIII and his first Queen, Catherine of Aragon, played an important part in attracting prominent scholars to England where they encouraged the spread of the new learning.  Catherine brought with her from Sapin Jan Luis Vives who had been her overseer of studies and her mother's educational advisor.  His friend Erasmus also worked in England for a time and maintained a correspondence with scholars here, and Sir Thomas More was a third scholar of international reputation.  More's  'best beloved children'  both girls and boys received an upbringing which embodied all that was best in the spirit of the Renaissance.  Their charming letters reveal that they studied not only Latin and Greek but philosophy, astronomy, physic, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric and music.
 
They formed part of the close-knit influential group of Renaissance scholars centred on the court of Henry VIII and encouraging the spread of Renaissance thought and the widening of the curriculum to include many new subjects.  They were, of course, all Catholic, and the King's divorce effectively broke up the group, sending Vives overseas again and Sir Thomas More to his death.  Other scholars chose to follow their king or the returning Puritans rather than the {ope, and after the English Reformation maintained the development of the new scholastic tratition.  Prominent members of this second generation of scholare were Roger Ascham, tutor to Princess Elizabeth, Henry Cheke and Richard Mulcaster.  They were all educated at Cambridge which had become noted for its scholars' puritan sympathies.


 Sir Humphrey Gilbert proposed the following scheme for the education of Queen Elizabeth's wards, mostly the sons of noblemen:
'Grammar, Latin and Greek, Hebrew, logic and rhetoric, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, riding, arms, geography, astronomy, the principles of navigation, science, modern languages, French, Spanish and Italian, dancing, music and heraldry.'
    Lansdowne MS 98, EETS extra series vol. 8 ed. F.J. Furnivall, 1869

In spite of the enormous widening of the curriculum Latin continued to be considered the most important subject studied.  The chief purpose of a classical education was the forming of character through the Classical authors, an idea which remained current right up to the 20th century.  So Dean Colet gave his reason for founding St. Paul's School in 1518 as:
  'by this school specially to increase knowledge and worshiping of God and our Lord Christ Jesus and good Christian life and manners in the children.
  F.  Watson The English grammar schools to 1660.  1968.

There were strong reasons for boys to study Latin. It was the common language of Europe, the language of politics, the Church, and the professions.  Some schools made the upper forms talk Latin at all times, the regulations for Harrow, written in 1580, stated that :
'None above the first form shall speak English in the school or when they are together at play'
   F. Watson op. cit.

As the colloquies of Magdalen School, Oxford, put it:
  'Here we may drynke of the pure well of latyne tongue and eloquence, which is nothynge fayrer, o gracious children that wetith ther lypps therin.'
    British Library MS 249 Arundel Collection. 
    Quoted in W. Nelson, ed. A fifteenth century school book, 1956

There was considerable controversy over the use of beating.  Although individual teachers had, from time to time, condemned the universal practise of beating children who could not learn their lessons, beating was pretty universal. However, the rediscovery of the Institute Oratoria of Quintillian in 1416 was very influential with Renaissance educationalists. This enlightened Roman (c.95CE) believed in the importance of the moral example of the teacher and the use of praise and reproof rather than floggings. These ideas were exploited by Erasmus:
   'Pupil: "The entire company of your pupils beg you to let them play."
   Master:  That's all you do even without permission."
  Pupil:'Your wisdom is aware that wits are stimulated by moderate play, as you have taught us from Quintillian."'
    Colloquies of Erasmus (original in Latin) translated by C.R. Thompson. U. Chicago Press, 1965

Erasmus, Hans Holbein the Younger,.  National Trust

In Europe the Jesuit Catholic schools also used the ideas of Quintillian, and were the first to systematically use competition.  Boys in lower forms were arranged as rivals, in pairs, while each class was divided into two camps, Rome and Carthage, to compete against each other, see the influence of Roman history.  Religion was no barrier to good teaching methods, and th ideas of the Jesuites were adopted by Protestant educators.  The Puritan John Brinsley took the system further, suggesting yearly examinations and an elaborate system of punishments which depended on the loss of place in the form, loss of privileges and use of tasks and detentions. (John Brinsley, Ludus Literarius or The Grammar Schoole, 1627, ed. E.T. Campagnac, Liverpool U.P. 1917, )

An enlightened humanist who had considerable influence on teaching methods in England was Roger Ascham, the Princess Elizabeth's tutor, a Puritan, appointed by her father Henry VIII who took great interest in education and the new Renaissance learning. Ascham's book on educational theory, The Scholemaster, 1570, is full of genuine understanding and love of children.  To judge from the performance of his royal charge, Ascham had a natural gift for teaching, and like all the best teachers he understood that not all children were suited to a classical education, and that they should study according to their abilities: 'Children who are quiet, steady, but slow to learn are not sent to school or driven to hate learning by beating.  Such a child, if he later becomes a student of the common law, or page in the court, or servingman, or bound apprentice to a merchant or to some handicraft, he proveth in the end, wiser, happier, and many times honester too, than many of these quick wits do by their learning.'

The Scholemaster was inspired by Sir William Cecil's reporting to Ascham that 'divers scholars of Eton be run away from the school for fear of beating'
   Ascham, The Scholmaster, 1570, ed. Rev. Giles, 1867

 Theme writing on a moral or political subject and composing Latin verse were methods of teaching which became popular with the English Puritans.  This led many scholars to reading English poetry which they would probably not have read otherwise, since scholars used English models and practised in English before attempting Latin.

Two children, artist unknown, National Museum of Wales.

All Protestants agreed, and differed from their Catholic predecessors, in making the Bible the centre of their religious teaching.  A direct result of the Reformation in England under Herny VIII was the imposition of a government approved English primer or prayerbook in place of the Catholic Latin prayers.  A standard English Bible was also introduced.  For Protestants religious instruction in the vernacular was an integral part of their doctrine and teachers placed greater importance on reading and writing English 'now that we are returned home to our English ABC as most natural to our soul and most proper to our faith.'
   Richard Mulcaster, Positions, 1581, quoted on F. Watson, op.cit

Further injunctions in the reign of Elizabeth I concerning the duty of parents to instruct and catechise their children according to the Church of England show that politicians as well as religious leaders recognised the importance of early training.  There was steady pressure to maintain religious conformity among teachers, culminating in their having, like preachers, to take the Oath of Uniformity.

Wen from the schoole ye shall take your waye
Or orderly then go ye, two in aray...
Not runnynge on heapes as a swarme of bees
As at this day Every man it nowe sees
Not usynge but refusynge Such foolyshe toyes
As commonly are used In these dayes of boyes
As hoopynge and halowynge as in hyntynge the foxe
That men it hearynge Deryde them with mockes'
         Seager, The Schoole of Vertue, 1557

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