[Sidenote: Memory stressed, rather than reason; authority emphasized; and individuality repressed.] =The Lapse into Formalism.=--There came to be both in Catholic and Protestant institutions a tendency to regard the subjects taught as materials for discipline rather than as valuable for their content. The studies largely became an end in themselves and were deprived of almost all their vitality. The curriculum of the institutions became fixed and stereotyped in nature, and education lapsed into a formalism but little superior to that of the mediæval scholastics. The methods of teaching came to stress memory more than reason. The Protestants had claimed to depend less upon uncritical and obedient acceptance of dogma than upon the constant application of reason to the Scriptures, but they soon tended to emphasize the importance of authority and the repression of the individual quite as clearly as the Catholics, who definitely held that reason is out of place and unreliable as a final guide in education and life. Hence, except for launching the great conception of state support and control of education, the Reformation accomplished but little directly making for individualism and progress, either through the Catholic awakening or the Protestant revolts. Education fell back before long into the grooves of formalism, repression, and distrust of reason. There resulted a tendency to test life and the educational preparation for living by a formulation of belief almost as much as in the days of scholasticism. SUPPLEMENTARY READING