THE ORGANIZING WORK OF CALVIN. From the point of view of American educational history the most important developments in connection with the Reformation were those arising from Calvinism. While the Calvinistic faith was rather grim and forbidding, viewed from the modern standpoint, the Calvinists everywhere had a program for political, economic, and social progress which has left a deep impress on the history of mankind. This program demanded the education of all, and in the countries where Calvinism became dominant the leaders included general education in their scheme of religious, political, and social reform. [1] In the governmental program which Calvin drew up (1537) for the religious republic at Geneva (p. 298), he held that learning was "a public necessity to secure good political administration, sustain the Church unharmed, and maintain humanity among men." In his plan for the schools of Geneva, published in 1538, he outlined a system of elementary education in the vernacular for all, which involved instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, careful grammatical drill, and training for civil as well as for ecclesiastical leadership. In his plan of 1541 he upholds the principle, as had Luther, that "the liberal arts and good training are aids to a full knowledge of the Word." This involved the organization of secondary schools, or _colleges_ as he called them, following the French nomenclature, to prepare leaders for the ministry and the civil government through "instruction in the languages and humane science." In the colleges (secondary schools) which he organized at Geneva and in neighboring places to give such training, and which became models of their kind which were widely copied, the usual humanistic curriculum was combined with intensive religious instruction. These colleges became famous as institutions from which learned men came forth. The course of study in the seven classes of one of the Geneva colleges, which has been preserved for us, reveals the nature of the instruction (R. 175). The lowest class began with the letters, reading was taught from a French-Latin Catechism, and the usual Latin authors were read. Greek was begun in the fourth class, and, in addition to the usual Greek authors, the New Testament was read in Greek. In the higher classes, as was common also in German _gymnasia_, logic and rhetoric were taught to prepare pupils to analyze, argue, and defend the faith. Elocution was also given much importance in the upper classes as preparation for the ministry, two original orations being required each month. Psalms were sung, prayers offered, sermons preached and questioned on, and the Bible carefully studied. The men who went forth from the colleges of Geneva to teach and to preach the Calvinistic gospel were numbered by the hundreds. [2] Calvin's great educational work at Geneva has been well summarized by a recent writer, [3] as follows: