A History of Giggleswick School from its Foundation, 1499 to 1912Bell, Edward Allen
History
A History of Giggleswick School from its Foundation, 1499 to 1912
Bell, Edward Allen
Giggleswick School (Giggleswick, England) -- History
The curriculum in Schools at the beginning of the sixteenth century
consisted of what was called the Trivium, Grammar, Dialectic, and
Rhetoric. The Quadrivium or Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy,
was relegated to the Universities and only pursued by very few. In 1535
Henry VIII wished "laten, greken, and hebrewe to be by my people
applied and larned." Latin was not in those days a mere method of
training the youthful mind, it was much more a practically useful piece
of knowledge. It was a standard of communication and a storehouse of
phrases. It was taught in the most approved fashion, as a language to be
spoken to fit them, as Brinsley says, "if they shall go beyond the seas,
as gentlemen who go to travel. Factors for merchants and the like."
Almost every boy learned his Latin out of the same book. Lily's Grammar
was ordered to supplant all others in 1540. The smallest local Grammar
Schools had much the same text-books and probably as good scholars as
Eton or Winchester or Westminster. The Master and Scholars must not talk
any language other than Latin, Greek or Hebrew according to the
Giggleswick Statutes, and at Eton and Westminster the same rule applied;
at those Schools any boy discovered talking English was punished with
the name of Custos, a title which involved various unpleasant duties.
Greek and Hebrew are both in the Giggleswick curriculum. Hallam says
that in 1500 not more than three or four persons could be mentioned, who
had any tincture of Greek. Colet, in his re-foundation Statutes of S.
Paul's School ordained that future Headmasters "must be learned in good
and clean Latin Literature" and also "in Greek, if such may be gotten."
But towards the close of the century Greek had become well-established.
Durham introduced it in 1593, the Giggleswick Statutes imply its use in
1592, and Camden, Headmaster of Westminster, in 1597 brought out a Greek
Grammar, which became as universal as Lily's Latin Grammar.
Of Hebrew there are few records, and none at Giggleswick, it was
probably allotted very little time, and certainly at the Universities,
it was for long at a very low ebb.
With regard to English very little was done. Erasmus was responsible for
a slightly wider outlook and he encouraged History in Latin books and in
a less degree Geography as a method of illustration. Mulcaster who
published his book "Positions" in 1561 deplored the fact that education
still began with Latin, although religion was no longer "restrained to
Latin." The Giggleswick Statutes set it forth that the Master shall
instruct his scholars--for more knowledge of the Liberal Sciences and
catechize them every week in the knowledge of Christian Religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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