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The Schoolmaster taught Latin mainly.

chooses a popular and attainable object, and shows tre

Most people don't know among the few who lo,

mendous energy in pursuit of it. precisely what they want; and nine-tenths or more fail through lack of energy. But Sturni was quite clear in his aim, and having settled the means, he showed inmense energy and strength of will in going through with them. He wanted to restore the language of Cicero and Ovid and to give his pupils great power of elegant expression in that language. Like all schoolmasters he professed that piety and knowledge (which in more modern phrase would be wisdom and knowledge) should come first, but like most schoolmasters he troubled himself mainly, if not exclusively, about the art of expression. As an abstract proposition the schoolmaster admits that to have in your head something worth saying is more important than to have the power of expression ready in case anything worth saying should "6 come along." But the schoolmaster's art always has taken, and I suppose, in the main, always will take for its material the means of expression; and by preference it chooses a tongue not vulgar or "understanded of the people." Thus the schoolmasters with Sturm at their head set themselves to teach words-foreign words, and allowed their pupils to study nothing else, not even the mother tongue. The satirist who wrote Hudibras has stated for us the result"No sooner are the organs of the brain Quick to receive and stedfast to retain Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon Retrieving of the curse of Babylon.

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Om Abuse of Human Learning," by Samuel Butler.

Resulting verbalism.

§ 11. One of the scholars of the Renascence, Hieronymus Wolf, was wise enough to see that there might be no small merit in a boy's silence: "Nec minima pueri virtus est tacere cum recte loqui nesciat" (Quoted by Parker). But this virtue of silence was not encouraged by Sturm, and he determined that by the age of sixteen his pupils should have a fair command of expression in Latin and some knowledge of Greek.* Latin indeed was to supplant the mother tongue, and boys were to be severely punished for using their own language. By this we may judge of the pernicious effects of following Sturm. And it is a mistake to suppose that the unwisdom of tilting at the vernacular was not so much Sturm's, as of the age in which he lived. The typical English schoolmaster of the century, Mulcaster, was in this and many other ways greatly in advance of Sturm. To him it was plain that we should "care for that most which we ever use most, because we need it most."† The only need recognized by Sturm was need of the classical languages. Thus he and his admirers led the unlucky schoolboy straight into that "slough of Despond ”—verbalism, in which he has struggled ever since;

"Plunged for some sense, but found no bottom there,

So learned and floundered on in mere despair."‡

Multum illum profecisse arbitror, qui ante sextum decimum ætatis annum facultatem duarum linguarum mediocrem assecutus est. (Quoted by Parker.)

+ R. Mulcaster's Positions, 1581, p. 30. I have reprinted this book (1.ongmans, 1888, price 10s.).

Sturm's school "had an European reputation: there were Poles and Portuguese, Spaniards, Danes, Italians, French and English. But besides this, it was the model and mother school of a numerous progeny. Sturm himself organized schools for several towns which applied to him

Some books about Sturm.

His disciples became organizers, rectors, and professors. In short, if Melanchthon was the instructor, Sturm was the schoolmaster f Germany. Together with his method, his school-books were spread broadcast over the land. Both were adopted by Ascham in England, and by Buchanan in Scotland. Sturm himself was a great man at the imperial court. No diplomatist passed through Strasburg without stopping to converse with him. He drew a pension from the King of Denmark, another from the King of France, a third from the Queen of England, collected political information for Cardinal Granvella, and was ennobled by Charles V. He helped to negotiate peace between France and England, and was appointed to confer with a commission of Cardinals on reunion of the Church. In short, Sturm knew what he was about as well as most men of his time. Yet few will be disposed to accept his theory of education, even for the sixteenth century, as the best. Wherein then lay the mistake? . Sturm asserted that the proper end of school education is eloquence, or in modern phrase, a masterly command of language, and that the knowledge of things Imainly belongs to a later stage . . Sturm assumed that Latin is the language in which eloquence is to be acquired."

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This is from Mr. Charles Stuart Parker's excellent account of Sturm in Essays on a Liberal Education, edited by Farrar, Essay I., On History of Classical Education, p. 39.

I find from Herbart (Päd. Schriften, O. Wilmann's edition, vol. ij, 229 ff; Beyer's edition, ij, 321) that the historian, F. H. Ch. Schwarz, took very favourable view of Sturm's work; and both he and Karl Schmidt give Sturm credit for introducing the two ways of studying an author that may be carried on at the same time-Ist, statarisch, i.e., reading a small quantity accurately, and 2nd, cursorisch, i.e., getting over the ground. These two kinds of reading were made much of by J. M. Gesner (1691-1761). Ernst Laas has written Die Pädagogik J. Sturms which no doubt does him justice, but I have not seen the bock

IV.

SCHOOLS OF THE JESUITS.

§ 1. SINCE the Revival of Learning, no body of men has played so prominent a part in education as the Jesuits. With characteristic sagacity and energy they soon seized on education as a stepping-stone to power and influence; and with their talent for organization, they framed a system of schools which drove all important competitors from the field, and made Jesuits the instructors of Catholic, and even, to some extent, of Protestant Europe. Their skill in this capacity is attested by the highest authorities, by Bacon* and by Descartes, the latter of whom had himself been their pupil; and it naturally met with its reward: for more than

Why did Bacon, who spoke slightingly of Sturm (see Parker, in Essays on Lib. Ed.), rate the Jesuits so highly? "Consule scholas Jesuitarum: nihil enim quod in usum venit his melius," De Aug., lib. iv, cap. iv. See, too, a longer passage in first book of De Aug. (about end of first), "Quæ nobilissima pars priscæ disciplinæ revocata est aliquatenus, quasi postliminio, in Jesuitarum collegiis; quorum cum Intueor industriam solertiamque tam in doctrina excolenda quanı in moribus informandis, illud occurrit Agesilai de Pharnabazo, 'Talis cum sis, utinam noster esses.

Importance of the Jesuit Schools.

one hundred years nearly all the foremost men throughout Christendom, both among the clergy and laity, had received the Jesuit training, and in most cases retained for life an attachment to their old masters.

§ 2. About these Jesuit schools—once so celebrated and so powerful, and still existing in great numbers, though little remains of their original importance-there does not seem to be much information accessible to the English reader. I have, therefore, collected the following particulars about them; and refer any one who is dissatisfied with so meagre an account, to the works which I have consulted. * The Jesuit schools, as I said, still exist, but they did their

* (1) Joseph Anton Schmid's "Niedere Schulen der Jesuiten: "Regensburg, 1852. (2) Article by Wagenmann in K. A. Schmid's “Encyclopädie des Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens." (3) "Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Soc. Jesu." The first edition of this work, published at Rome in 1585, was suppressed as heretical, because it contemplated the possibility of differing from St. Thomas Aquinas. The book is now very scarce. There is a copy in the British Museum. On comparing it with the folio edition ("Constitutiones," &c., published at Prag in 1632), I find many omissions in the latter, some of which are curious, e.g., under "De Matrimonio :". "Matremne an uxorem occidere sit gravius, non est hujus loci." (4) "Paræresis ad Magistros Scholarum Inferiorum Soc. Jesu, scripta a P. Francisco Sacchino, ex eâdem Societate." (5) "Juvencius de Ratione Discendi et Docendi." Crétineau-Joly's "Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus " (Paris, 1844), I have not made much use of. Sacchini and Jouvency were both historians of the Order. The former died in 1625, the latter in 1719. There is a good sketch of the Jesuit schools, by Andrewes, in Barnard's American Journal of Education, vol. xiv, 1864, reprinted in the best book I know of in English on the History of Education, Barnard's German Teachers.

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