A STUDENT’S HISTORY OF EDUCATION

A STUDENT’S HISTORY
OF EDUCATION

BY
FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES
(Ph.D., COLUMBIA)
DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSOR
OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1915,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
——
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1915.


Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO

WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON, LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

WITH APPRECIATIVE MEMORIES OF
SIX PLEASANT YEARS OF ASSOCIATION

PREFACE

There is a growing conviction among those engaged in training teachers that the History of Education must justify itself. It is believed that, if this subject is to contribute to the professional equipment of the teacher, its material must be selected with reference to his specific needs. Antiquarian interests and encyclopædic completeness are alluring and may in their place prove praiseworthy and valuable, but they do not in themselves supply any definite demand in the training of teachers. The greatest services that the History of Education can perform for the teacher are to impel him to analyze his problems more completely and to throw light upon the school practices with which he is himself concerned. By presenting a series of clear-cut views of past conditions, often in marked contrast to his own, it should make him conscious that the present educational situation has to a large degree been traditionally received, and it should at the same time especially help him to understand the origin and significance of current practices.

In this way a study of the History of Education will disrupt the teacher’s complacent acceptance of the present, and will enable him to reconstruct his ideas in the light of the peculiar conditions out of which the education of his times has sprung. Whenever historical records do not assist in such an analysis and synthesis of present day problems, they may be frankly dismissed from discussion. This conception of the subject, I have myself, with much reluctance, come to accept. My own regard for the classics, philosophy, and general history as college disciplines has caused me to view with apprehension any disposition to curtail their scope. It now seems clear, however, that the modern tendency to emphasize the functional aspects of the History of Education is both necessary and wise. The present work, therefore, is not a mere condensation of my History of Education in Three Volumes, but has been very largely re-written from the new angle.

In the first place, I have sought to stress educational institutions and practices, rather than theories that did not find embodiment in the times. This has led to the omission of much that is unessential or more strictly related to philosophy, general history, or literature. For example, even the immortal work of Plato and Aristotle has been epitomized; the entire subject of mysticism and most of scholasticism have been dropped; the masterpieces of such pure theorists as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Mulcaster, are barely mentioned; and the various historical epochs are given only so much detail as may be needed to form a social setting for the educational movements of those periods.

Secondly, it has seemed to me that our present problems in education can best be analyzed through a knowledge of the practices that have developed in modern times. Hence, while this book includes an account of all educational endeavor from the day of primitive man to the present, somewhat more than one-half the material is connected with the last two centuries. Even the attractive period of Hellenic activity and the fascinating stories of monasticism and of chivalry have been reduced to a minimum. But, though most of the changes in the earlier half of the work are in the nature of shortening, or have to do with more immediate connections, some topics, notably the development of commerce and cities (Chapter XI) and the analysis of formal discipline (Chapter XVI), have seemed to be so closely connected with subsequent progress as to deserve more adequate treatment.

Finally, since this book is intended chiefly for teachers in the United States, I have believed it most helpful to give considerable space to the discussion of American education. The account of each educational movement has included at least an attempt to trace its influence upon the content, method, and organization of education in the United States, while three chapters have been devoted exclusively to the rise of educational systems in this country.

My indebtedness for many valuable features in this book is heavy. The idea of an Outline, which appears at the beginning of each chapter, was first suggested to me by the History of Modern Elementary Education of Dean S. C. Parker of the College of Education, University of Chicago, although I have adopted a different explanation of its value. Professor Parker also read through the manuscript and sent me a general estimate of it. Professors J. H. Coursault of the University of Missouri, A. J. Jones of the University of Maine, W. H. Kilpatrick of Columbia University, A. R. Mead of Ohio Wesleyan University, and A. L. Suhrie of the West Chester (Pennsylvania) State Normal School, have all read the manuscript through with exceeding care and furnished me with numerous corrections and criticisms, both particular and general. Professor T. H. Briggs of Columbia University suggested a number of improvements in the chapter upon Present Day Tendencies in Education (XXVII). The chapter upon the Educational Influences of the Reformation (XIII) has been relieved of several inaccuracies, and possibly of some Protestant bias, through the assistance of the Rev. Benedict Guldner, S. J., of St. Joseph’s College, and of Brother Denis Edward, F. S. C., President of La Salle College, Philadelphia. I have also, as usual, been greatly aided by my wife, Helen Wadsworth Graves.

F. P. G.

FOREWORD

Each chapter in this book will be prefaced by an Outline, or generalized statement of the ideas to be included in it. Logically such an epitome is needed at the beginning as well as at the end of the chapter. At the beginning, it serves as a hypothetical or tentative generalization of the facts; at the end, as a conclusion whose truth has been tested in the light of these facts and accepted with conviction.

By having this outline in mind when he studies the facts, the student is enabled not only to see that the general statements are verified and made more significant by the details, but at the same time to organize the facts with reference to the generalization, and thereby secure an easier control of them, and, through the relation of each to the others, discover a fuller meaning in them all. Then, after this study of the details has established the truth of the outline and enriched its meaning, he can review the outline and fix it in mind as the conclusion of the chapter.

PART I
ANCIENT TIMES

A STUDENTS HISTORY OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

THE EARLIEST EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Even a brief survey of the history of education may greatly broaden one’s view.

Starting with primitive man, we find that his training aims only at the necessities of life, and is acquired informally through the elders and the medicine-men.

In Oriental education, the next stage in progress, illustrated by India, a traditional knowledge is acquired through memoriter and imitative methods.

While Oriental, Jewish education afforded greater development of individuality, but it was late in organizing schools, memoriter in methods, and restricted in content.

Thus all education before the day of the Greeks was largely non-progressive.

The Value of the History of Education.—The History of Education from the earliest times should contribute largely to one’s breadth of view and prove a study of the greatest liberal culture. A record of typical instances of the moral, æsthetic, and intellectual development of man in all lands and at all periods should certainly enlarge one’s vision and enable him to appreciate more fully the part that education has played in the progress of civilization. Such cultural values may be found even in a limited survey of the world’s educational development.

Its Treatment in This Book.—And this is all that will be undertaken here. For, while valuable as a liberal study, the History of Education finds its justification chiefly in the degree to which it functions in the professional training of a teacher, and it will be necessary in a brief treatise to omit or pass over hastily much that might be of interest and value in a more complete account of the development of civilization. Therefore, the amount of space and the perspective afforded the various peoples, epochs, and leaders must here be determined in large measure by the part they have played in the evolution of educational institutions and practices, and by the light their history sheds upon the aim, organization, content, and method of education to-day. At times, too, the history of a single epoch, state, or educational leader will be selected as a type, to the exclusion of others equally important, and treated with considerable intensiveness, instead of describing all sides of the subject with encyclopædic monotony. Now the first historical epoch to leave a real impress upon modern practice is that of Athens at its height. Hence a mere statement of the salient features of education preceding that period is all that can be afforded in this brief survey. A detailed account of the educational processes used by savage tribes, Oriental nations, and even Judæa may prove interesting and important in other connections, but it must here be largely curtailed.