Education: How Old The NewWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Education: How Old The New
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Education -- History
As a matter of fact, exactly the same thing happened in our modern
change of university interests during the latter half of the
nineteenth century as happened in the latter half of the fifteenth
century in Italy, and in the next century throughout Europe. With the
fall of Constantinople the Greeks were sent packing by the Turks and
they carried with them into Italy manuscripts of the old Greek
authors, examples of old Greek art and the classic spirit of devotion
to literature as such. A new educational movement termed the study of
the humanities had been making some way in Italy during the preceding
half-century before the fall of Constantinople, but now interest in it
came with a rush. The clergymen, the nobility, even the women of the
time became interested in the New Learning, as it was called. Private
schools of various kinds were opened for the study of it, and
everybody considered that it was the one thing that people who {105}
wanted to keep up to date, smart people, for they have always been
with us, should not fail to be familiar with. The humanities became
the fashion, just as science became the fashion in the nineteenth
century. Fashion has a wonderfully pervasive power and it runs in
cycles in intellectual matters as well as in clothes.
The devotees of the New Learning demanded a place for it in the
universities. University faculties perfectly confident, as university
faculties always are, that what they had in the curriculum was quite
good enough, and conservative enough to think that what had been good
enough for their forefathers was surely good enough also for this
generation, refused to admit the new studies. For a considerable
period, therefore, the humanities had to be pursued in institutions
apart from the universities. Indeed it was not until the Jesuits
showed how valuable classical studies might be made for developmental
purposes and true education that they were admitted into the
universities.
Note the similarity with certain events in our own time in all this.
Two generations ago the universities refused to admit science. They
were training men in their undergraduate departments by means of
classical literature. They argued exactly as did the old mediaeval
universities with regard to the new learning, that they had no place
for science. Science had to be learned, then, in separate institutions
for a time. The scientific {106} educational movement made its way,
however, until finally it was admitted into the university curricula.
Now we are in the midst of an educational period when the classics are
losing in favor so rapidly that it seems as though it would not be
long before they would be entirely replaced by the sciences, except,
in so far as those are concerned who are looking for education in
literature and the classic languages for special purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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