Essays on Educational ReformersQuick, Robert Hebert
History
Essays on Educational Reformers
Quick, Robert Hebert
Education -- History; Educators
“And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency
in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth
for the common service? Be either children or schools so small a portion
of our multitude? or is the framing of young minds, and the training
of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this
Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly
thought on? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master:
and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there
will be worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such
a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master
himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers
be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as
_Divines_, _Lawyers_, _Physicians_ do in their several professions?
Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them: and masters
would prove old men, and such as _Xenophon_ setteth over children in the
schooling of _Cyrus_. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift,
afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out
very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering
the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade
requireth a particular college, for these four causes. 1. First, for the
subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2.
Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them
that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profession, which
may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is
comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for
skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the
framing of the mind, and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite
consideration, beside the staidness of the person.” (_PP._, 9 pp. 248, 9.)
§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover the master of Edmund
Spenser, Mulcaster has been long forgotten; but when the history of
education in England comes to be written, the historian will show that
few schoolmasters in the fifteen hundreds or since were so enlightened as
the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’.[56]
IX.
RATICHIUS.
(1571-1635.)
§ 1. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds tells chiefly of
two very different classes of men. First we have the practical men,
who set themselves to supply the general demand for instruction in
the classical languages. This class includes most of the successful
schoolmasters, such as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits.
The other class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but merely
gave form to truths which would in the end affect teaching. These were
especially Rabelais and Montaigne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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