Download 1500-1600 Renaissance and Reformation Education

The English Reformation
In England, the Reformation was a much more localised affair, which centred on King Henry VIII's disputes
with Rome over the status of his various marriages.
In fact, at first Henry (pictured - from the portrait by Hans Holbein) opposed the reforming movement
and dedicated his book Assertio Septum Sacramentorum(Defence of the Seven Sacraments) to Pope
Leo X, who rewarded him in 1521 with the title Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith).
But by 1527 Henry wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon ended so that he could marry Anne
Boleyn. He was also anxious to extend the sovereignty of central government. So for both political and
personal reasons he overthrew Papal power and dissolved the monasteries.
Henry was born in 1491. Under the direction of John Skelton, Bernard Andre and others, he received the
best grammar school, song school and university education of the day. He studied Latin, literature,
rhetoric, dialectic, music, French, Italian and Spanish. He became king at the age of 19 in 1509.
He was undoubtedly a remarkable man. Leach could hardly be more fulsome in praise of him:
“Henry VIII was, perhaps, the most highly educated person for his time who ever sat on the throne of
England. ... Hence his zeal for learning and for education. No king ever showed more desire to promote
learning and learned men, and none was more impressed and desirous of impressing on others the
advantages, or did more for the advancement of education. Whether in the statutes of the realm or in
the ordinances and statutes of the many foundations of his time, he was never tired of expatiating on
the necessity of education and the benefit that educated men were to church and commonwealth.”
(Leach 1915:277)
Leach estimates that at the start of Henry's reign England probably had about 400 schools for a
population of 2.25 million, or one school for every 5,625 people (Leach 1915:331). He does, however,
warn that 'It is difficult to arrive at a precise estimate of the proportion of schools to population,
because, while it is hard to ascertain the exact number of schools, it is even harder, and perhaps
impossible, to ascertain the population of England at any given date in the Middle Ages' (Leach
1915:329).
Under Henry's leadership, the English Reformation affected education in a number of ways. Some of the
old foundation schools were closed and an equal number of new ones were opened. Many older schools
were revived, expanded, or converted into free schools. The grammar school remained central to the
system, but there was an important change in its sponsorship. Whereas the typical medieval grammar
school had belonged to the church, the new grammar schools were mostly private foundations
'supervised in variable degree by Church and State' (Williams 1961:132).
The abolition of the greater monasteries in 1540 resulted in the refoundation of twelve grammar
schools as part of the 'new foundation' cathedrals. Here the monks, who had turned out the canons 600
years earlier, were now turned out to make room for canons. 'In all the new cathedrals established in
1541 ... a grammar school, with a master and usher paid on the highest scale of the day, was included'
(Leach 1915:312).
In the Statutes of the refounded school at Canterbury, the last chapter concerned 'The Method of
Teaching'. It provided for six classes, three under the usher and three under the head master:
The lower books were Cato, Æsop and Familiar Colloquies. In Form III, Terence and Mantuanus'Eclogues;
in the Fourth Form, they began to practise writing Latin letters; not until the Fifth Form did they begin to
write Latin verses, and polished themes and translated poets and historians. In the Sixth Form, they read
Erasmus's Copia Verborum and made 'varyings', that is, turned sentences of Latin from the oratio
obliqua to theoratio directa, and from one tense and mood to another, 'so as to acquire the faculty of
speaking Latin as well as is possible for boys'. (Leach 1915:316)
These refounded schools would provide 'the greater part of the education of England till the eighteenth
century' (Leach 1915:316).
Another significant outcome of the Reformation was the translation of the Latin Bible into the vernacular.
In 1535 Henry VIII's Vicar-General and chief adviser Thomas Cromwell ordered that copies of William
Tyndale's new English Bible were to be placed in every parish church.
Parliament was clearly unhappy with this decision, because in 1543 (three years after Cromwell had
fallen from grace and been executed) it passed an Act which banned artisans, husbandmen, labourers,
servants and almost all women from reading or discussing the Bible.
The prohibition proved impossible to enforce. Indeed, the brief availability of the English Bible had
already encouraged many to learn to read and had made them think about the nature of society and the
church. 'This was indeed a cultural revolution of unprecedented proportions, and one whose
consequences stretched far beyond the period of the Reformation and the English Revolution' (Chitty
2007:14).
The English Renaissance
The Renaissance came relatively late to England. It is generally viewed as being a feature of the
Elizabethan period in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, with writers like William Shakespeare,
Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney and John
Milton, architects such as Inigo Jones, and composers Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and William Byrd.
However, while the Reformation resulted in changes to the structure of the English school system, the
Renaissance appears to have had little effect on the curriculum. As Williams (1961:132) puts it, 'while the
schools were reorganised by the Reformation their teaching was not redirected by the Renaissance'.
Greek and sometimes Hebrew were added to the main Latin curriculum (to assist correct understanding
of the scriptures), and there was more study of literature. But the education provided by the grammar
schools - and by the universities - remained 'rigid and narrow' (Williams 1961:132). Thus:
“The major achievements of the Renaissance, in the vernacular literatures, in geographical discovery, in
new painting and music, in the new spirit in philosophy and physical inquiry, in changing attitudes to the
individual, had little effect on the standard forms of general education.”(Williams 1961:133)
However, the Renaissance did have the effect of extending education to the laity, while Henry's reforms
reduced the control of the monks:
“... as long as the clergy was sterilized, and yet monopolized a large and ever-increasing proportion of
the territory and wealth of the world, progress was checked. The quiet thinker was lured into the
cloister, the progressive thinker was under a ban, originality was a crime, and repression prevailed
especially in the region, in which it is most dangerous, of religion and philosophy. In Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Flanders, the most populous and naturally the richest countries, the Renaissance was strangled almost in
its cradle by monasticism in its most formidable development, the Inquisition: while its growth was
stunted in France and Germany by the prolonged series of wars and massacres between the upholders
of monasticism and the friends of free thought. Its full development was reserved for England and
Scotland, where the monasteries, and with them clerical celibacy, were suddenly and wholly swept
away.” (Leach 1915:331-2)
Williams (1961:133) argues that the period was a complex one, but with three clear trends: 'the increase
in vernacular teaching, the failure of the traditional institutions to adapt either to a changing economy or
to an expanding culture, and the passing of most of the leading schools from sponsorship by a national
institution to private benefaction.
The main educational theories of the Renaissance - especially the ideal of the scholar-courtier - had little
effect on English schools. In fact, Williams argues that they had 'the paradoxical effect of reducing the
status of schools' in favour of an alternative pattern, 'drawing in part on the chivalric tradition, of
education at home through a private tutor' (Williams 1961:133), a preference which, for many families,
would last well into the nineteenth century.
Apprenticeships and chivalry
As early as the 16th century - and more so in the 17th - there was much criticism of the limited curriculum
of the grammar schools, based as it was on the requirements of the universities and the learned
professions. In particular, it no longer suited the needs of the upper classes, who wanted their sons
trained for posts at Court, for diplomacy and for higher appointments in the army.
As a result, two other types of educational provision became popular with the upper classes:
apprenticeships in crafts and trades, which were standardised in the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers in
1562; and the chivalry system, which enabled noble families to send their young sons to be pages at
great houses and undergo a course of training for knighthood. Williams (1961:131) points out that:
The existence of these two systems, alongside the academic system, reminds us of the determining
effect on education of the actual social structure. The labouring poor were largely left out of account,
although there are notable cases of individual boys getting a complete education, through school and
university, by outstanding promise and merit. For the rest, education was organised in general relation to
a firm structure of inherited and destined status and condition: the craft apprentices, the future knights,
the future clerisy.
Elsewhere in Europe - in France and in the German and Scandinavian states - knightly or courtly
academies were being founded to give instruction to young nobles, not only in horsemanship and the
use of arms, but also in modern languages, history and geography, and in the application of mathematics
to military and civil engineering.
A proposal for the establishment of a school on these lines in England was made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert
in 1572, and in the following century Cowley, Locke, Defoe and other writers urged the setting up of
such schools. In the 17th century England's upper classes sent their sons to private tutors, and then to the
continental knightly or courtly academies. The development of this type of school designed for the
governing class 'was one of a number of movements which reflected the maladjustment between the
classical grammar schools and the needs of contemporary life' (Spens 1938:10).
New types of school
Although the traditional grammar school changed little, there were significant developments in the
education of younger children. The number of schools increased and there was 'a bewildering variety of
forms, ranging from instruction by priests to private adventure schools, often as a sideline to
shopkeeping and trade' (Williams 1961:133).
Many of the 'petties' or 'ABCs' were proper schools, with links to grammar schools. Indeed, in a few
cases, they virtually took over the running of grammar schools whose old endowments had shrunk.
Another type of school which began to develop was the 'writing school'. The aim of these schools was to
meet the secular needs of a society in which trade was now expanding rapidly and whose administration
was becoming more complex. They taught 'scrivener's English and the casting of accounts' (Williams
1961:133) and in some cases this teaching was adopted by the grammar schools.