And as it is with individuals, so it is with nations. The schools of all
nations maintained their classical curriculum; boys still began, and
often ended, their schooling with the Latin grammar, but this did not
mean, as it had meant in the earlier days, that the influence was the
same. There was indeed little in common between what we may venture to
call the pedantry of Germany and the superficial elegancy of the Jesuit
schools. And so the classical basis did not prevent the school assuming
a national complexion. Let me give one illustration of the manner in
which the classical teaching could take a markedly national spirit.
Perhaps the most effective classical teaching that we find in the
eighteenth century is that at Eton, and it was on it that was founded
the great school of oratory and statesmanship. It was on Cicero and
Homer and Demosthenes that Pitt and Fox and Canning and Gladstone (for
the tradition continued to his day) formed their minds and their style,
but they emerged from their training above all Englishmen, but
Englishmen who had learnt how to give to their own national feelings a
dignity of expression and nobility of form equal to that of the
exemplars whom they had studied.
Now just as the finest expression of the English national spirit is
found in those whose school training had been based on the classics,
just as the Girondists based their revolutionary doctrines on Hellenic
models, so almost at the same time the great political awakening of
Germany and Prussia was inspired by what has been called the second
Renaissance; and yet how profound is the divergence between Wellesley
and Pitt, Humboldt and Stein, St. Just, Demousin, and Vergniaud; all
were children of the common classical tradition, but how different is
the use to which they put it. During the centuries that passed between
the Renaissance and the Revolution, the education of the different
countries had then in fact been drifting far apart. What has been done
during the nineteenth century has been openly to carry into effect
changes which had long been overdue and were already to a large extent
operative.
It was inevitable that the new literature and thought would eventually
find its way into the schools and universities. Before this change had
been accomplished, a fresh and even stronger influence asserted itself.
Democracy had come, and a democracy which based the state on the
principle of nationality. It seized on the school as the means to hold
the minds of men in fief, just as had the mediaeval Church, and in doing
so enforced and perpetuated the national differences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account