A Puritan Education

'The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first Parents by repairing to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.'
   John Milton (1608-1674) Of Education, 1644

In the early 17th century educationalists, particularly the Puritans among them, began to favour including practical subjects in the curriculum.  Many of their ideas were pioneered in the works of the Czech educator John Amos Comenius, whose Orbis Sensualium Pictus was first published in Germany in 1658 and was translated into English in 1678 by his friend Charles Hoole.   His ideas were set out in Janua Linguarum Reserata or, the gate of tongues unlocked, 1631.  He believed in universal education, in the vernacular, until., about the age of twelve, combined with practical education in some skill. These ideas and his work on kindergartens and the value of play in learning  continue to inspire educators to the present day, especially in Germany,

The first educational book to successfully use illustrations as a teaching aid.

Charles Hoole recommended the pictures 'to entice witty children to it, that they may not conceit it a torment to be in the School, but dainty-fare.'
   The Usher's Duty, 1659, In A New Discovery in the old Art of Teaching Schoole, 1660, ed. E.T. Campagnac, 1917

Hoole was one of an influential group of mid 17th century Puritan educationalists which included Samuel Hartlib, John Milton and Sir William Petty, who gives a charming picture of the everyday pastimes of children at this time:
  'For we see children to delight in drums, pipes, fifes, guns made of elder sticks...painting flags and ensigns with elderberries and cornpoppy, making ships with paper, setting even nut shells a-swimming...making pictures in their writing books, making tops, gigs and whirligigs, gilting balls, practising divers juggling tricks upon the cards etc...And for the females they will be making pies with clay, making their babies (dolls) clothes and dressing them therewith, they will put leaves on sticks as if they were roasting meat; they will imitate all the talk and actions which they observe in their mother and her gossips...'
  Epistle to his honoured friend Master Samuel Hartlib, 1647

Samuel Hartlib was an agriculturalist and was keen to see practical agriculture more widely taught.  These educationalists gave more importance to science, and to its study through actual observation, weighing, measuring etc.  The Nonconformists began to found their own schools in the later 17th century, because the universities were closed to them because of their non-conforming religious beliefs, and their curriculum has a strong practical bias.  This made their schools popular with families who did not necessarily agree with their religious views but wanted a good general education for their sons.  Defoe attended Newington Green Academy in the late 17th century and describes the curriculum as including classical languages, French, Italian, maths, natural science, history, geography, logic and politics.
I. Pinchbeck, & M. Hewitt, Children in English Society, vol. 1, 1969

Comenius, the master and his pupil

Physical education for boys, continued to be considered very important. In the mid 16th century, Roger Ascham (1515-1568) had recommended that boys should  be able to: 'ride comely, to run fair at the tilt or ring, to play at all weapons, to shoot fair in bow and straigt in gun, to vault lustily; to run, to leap, to wrestle, to swim...to hawk, to hunt, to play at tennis, and all pastimes generally which will be joined with labour used in open space, and in the daylight, containing some ft exercise for war or some pleasant pastime for peace.
 The whole works of Roger Ascham, ed. Rv. Mr. Giles, 1864

In the turmoil of the Civil War, in the 17th century, people were still more inclined to link physical education with provision for an efficient army.  Oliver Cromwell's secretary, John Milton, drew up a detailed plan for the military training of students at the academy proposed in his tract Of Education, 1644:
'This institution of breeding which I here delineate, shall be equally good both for peace and war,'  He recommends that the pupils spend their exercise time learning swordsmanship, wrestling, riding and the arts of war so that, if necessary, they will be ready to act as captains in the army.  At a time when all able-bodied men and boys were supposed to be trained to the use of weapons for the possible defence of the kingdom, schools, where numbers of boys were gathered together, must haver seemed the obvious place for organise military training, and the pracise has continued right up to the present day.

Comenius,  Parents and children, Masters and servants.

Charles Hoole,(1610-1667) the translator of Comenius, was a practising schoolmaster, teaching in Rotherham when the town was attacked during the Civil War.  The town was defended by Col. Fairfax for Parliament and about thirty of the boys at the school 'undertook the management of a draje, which was placed at the entrance of the bridge, and did considerable execution.'  In Kings Norton, now on the edge of Birmingham, the boys attending the local school, run by the Puritan Rev. Thomas Hall (1610-1665) defended the school against the Cavaliers which must have been quite difficult as almost next to the school was a house owned by Charles I's Queen Henrietta.. After the Restoration, Thomas Hall lost his job.

Kings Norton Grammar School

'My counsel is that (children) learn the Greek and Latin tongues especially from Christians and so without the lies, fables, follies, vanities, whoredoms, lust, pride, revenge etc. of the heathens...and most necessary it is that Christians should forget the names of their gods and muses, which were but devils and damned creatures, and all their mythology and fabulous inventions and let them all go to Satan from whence they came.
   William Dell, quoted in Foster Watson The English Grammar Schools to 1660, 1968

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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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