Of Education
Encyclopedia
The tractate Of Education was published in 1644, first appearing anonymously as a single eight-page quarto sheet (Ainsworth 6). Presented as a letter written in response to a request from the Puritan educational reformer Samuel Hartlib
, it represents John Milton
's most comprehensive statement on educational reform (Viswanathan 352), and gives voice to his views “concerning the best and noblest way of education” (Milton 63). As outlined in the tractate, education carried for Milton a dual objective: one public, to “fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” (55); and the other private, to “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of true virtue” (52).
with its emphasis on the via activa, tempered by the more contemplative medieval concern with personal redemption. It is clear, however, that the overwhelming thrust of Milton’s educational programme as outlined in the tractate is centred in the public objective. This is likely a reaction to the scholasticism
that dominated the medieval university
from the twelfth century, which still held sway in Milton’s time (Ainsworth 25).
Important individual influences on Milton’s tractate include Spanish educator Juan Luis Vives
(1492-1540) and Moravian educator John Comenius (1592-1670). Both Vives and Comenius rejected the dialectical
approach in education in favour of empirical observation and “the study of things rather than words, nature rather than books” (Lewalski 204). In an interesting fusion of empiricism and morality, both educators promoted the idea that the study of nature was instrumental to the formation of moral character (Viswanathan 352).
The learners in the Middle Ages
were the clerics who comprised the literate segment of medieval society and who were responsible for the production, transmission and exposition of scholarly texts, both sacred and classical (Hanning 594). Their ‘shared journey of discovery’ had become, by Milton’s time, an academic exercise so divorced from the practical realities of life as to render medieval education repulsive to Renaissance humanists in general, and to Milton in particular, for whom “the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages” did little more than immerse students in “unquiet deeps of controversy”, leaving them with “ragged notions and babblements” and “such things chiefly as were better unlearned” (Milton 54; hereafter cited by page number alone). Milton dismissed the medieval curriculum which produced such scholars as the “scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry” (Lewalski 208), and sought to liberate it from the scholastic yoke from which he believed it desperately needed rescuing.
, which turned its attention to the theoretical in the world of number, including the study of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These two foundational programmes prepared the medieval university student for the study of philosophy
and theology
with its heavy emphasis on dialectical reasoning.
After grammar, Milton takes up the cause of curricular sequence. He derides the medieval practice of “present[ing] their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics” after having only recently left “those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction” (54). Instead, he proposes “beginning with arts most easy”; that is to say, those “most obvious to the sense” (54). His method, as Riggs notes, is an inductive one, starting with the study of “sensible things” (52), and progressing to “things invisible” only after mastering the former (Riggs 450). This move effectively inverts the deductive method common in medieval education. The “organic arts” of rhetoric and logic therefore find a place at the end of Milton’s curriculum, rather than at the beginning (59). Noteworthy too is Milton’s inclusion of poetry amongst the other organic arts: “poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate” (60).
Milton’s proposed curriculum, encompassing as it does grammar, arithmetic, geometry, religion, agriculture, geography, astronomy, physics, trigonometry, ethics, economics, languages, politics, the law, theology, church history as well as the “organic arts” of poetry
, rhetoric
and logic
, is encyclopedic in scope. His main thrust in the educational enterprise remains, however, on that practical erudition which would serve both the individual in a moral sense and the state in a public sense, equipping people “to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages” (56). This stands in contrast to the contemplative and speculative concerns of
medieval education.
(Witt 34). Briefly stated, the humanist educational agenda of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries included “a clearer consciousness, among teachers and students, of education as a discipline for active life”, combined with “an insistence on the more extensive reading of ancient writers both classical and Christian as a means of securing this discipline” and “an attitude of severe and hostile criticism toward medieval education and culture” (Ainsworth 8).
Samuel Hartlib
Samuel Hartlib was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education. He settled in England, where he married and died...
, it represents John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's most comprehensive statement on educational reform (Viswanathan 352), and gives voice to his views “concerning the best and noblest way of education” (Milton 63). As outlined in the tractate, education carried for Milton a dual objective: one public, to “fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” (55); and the other private, to “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of true virtue” (52).
Influences
The influences at work in the tractate are an interesting blend of Renaissance humanismRenaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
with its emphasis on the via activa, tempered by the more contemplative medieval concern with personal redemption. It is clear, however, that the overwhelming thrust of Milton’s educational programme as outlined in the tractate is centred in the public objective. This is likely a reaction to the scholasticism
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
that dominated the medieval university
Medieval university
Medieval university is an institution of higher learning which was established during High Middle Ages period and is a corporation.The first institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of...
from the twelfth century, which still held sway in Milton’s time (Ainsworth 25).
Important individual influences on Milton’s tractate include Spanish educator Juan Luis Vives
Juan Luís Vives
Juan Luis Vives , also Joan Lluís Vives i March , was a Valencian Spanish scholar and humanist.-Biography:Vives was born in Valencia...
(1492-1540) and Moravian educator John Comenius (1592-1670). Both Vives and Comenius rejected the dialectical
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
approach in education in favour of empirical observation and “the study of things rather than words, nature rather than books” (Lewalski 204). In an interesting fusion of empiricism and morality, both educators promoted the idea that the study of nature was instrumental to the formation of moral character (Viswanathan 352).
Medieval education
The objective of medieval education was an overtly religious one, primarily concerned with uncovering transcendental truths that would lead a person back to God through a life of moral and religious choice (Kreeft 15). The vehicle by which these truths were uncovered was dialectic:
To the medieval mind, debate was a fine art, a serious science, and a fascinating entertainment, much more than it is to the modern mind, because the medievals believed, like Socrates, that dialectic could uncover truth. Thus a ‘scholastic disputation’ was not a personal contest in cleverness, nor was it ‘sharing opinions’; it was a shared journey of discovery (Kreeft 14-15).
The learners in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
were the clerics who comprised the literate segment of medieval society and who were responsible for the production, transmission and exposition of scholarly texts, both sacred and classical (Hanning 594). Their ‘shared journey of discovery’ had become, by Milton’s time, an academic exercise so divorced from the practical realities of life as to render medieval education repulsive to Renaissance humanists in general, and to Milton in particular, for whom “the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages” did little more than immerse students in “unquiet deeps of controversy”, leaving them with “ragged notions and babblements” and “such things chiefly as were better unlearned” (Milton 54; hereafter cited by page number alone). Milton dismissed the medieval curriculum which produced such scholars as the “scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry” (Lewalski 208), and sought to liberate it from the scholastic yoke from which he believed it desperately needed rescuing.
The Medieval curriculum
The medieval curriculum was characterized throughout by a preoccupation with the speculative. It began with the trivium, which included the study of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. Grammar instruction dominated the early years of a student’s education, where the focus, as Witt explains, was exclusively linguistic: “…in a school program where the student aimed at perfecting a prose style largely divorced from classical precedents, the emphasis in teaching grammar fell on providing instruction more in the mechanics of the language than in ancient literature” (26). The trivium laid the groundwork for the quadriviumQuadrivium
The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities, after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" , and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century...
, which turned its attention to the theoretical in the world of number, including the study of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These two foundational programmes prepared the medieval university student for the study of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
with its heavy emphasis on dialectical reasoning.
Milton’s proposed curriculum
Milton is clear in the tractate about the “many mistakes” that encumbered the medieval curriculum, which he censures as making “learning generally so unpleasing and unsuccessful” (53) in his time. His first target is the instruction of grammar. Milton is critical both of the amount of time spent on it as well as its mechanical emphasis: “we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year” (53). Progress, in his view, is delayed by unnecessarily “forcing the empty wits of children to compose theme, verses, and orations” (53); instead, he proposes that after some foundational grammatical instruction, students should “be won early to the love of virtue” by having “some easy and delightful book of education” from among the ancient classics read to them (56). The objective is not simply to teach grammar, but to “inflame [students] with the study of learning” (56). This, for Milton, was best accomplished through the reading of great literature.After grammar, Milton takes up the cause of curricular sequence. He derides the medieval practice of “present[ing] their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics” after having only recently left “those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction” (54). Instead, he proposes “beginning with arts most easy”; that is to say, those “most obvious to the sense” (54). His method, as Riggs notes, is an inductive one, starting with the study of “sensible things” (52), and progressing to “things invisible” only after mastering the former (Riggs 450). This move effectively inverts the deductive method common in medieval education. The “organic arts” of rhetoric and logic therefore find a place at the end of Milton’s curriculum, rather than at the beginning (59). Noteworthy too is Milton’s inclusion of poetry amongst the other organic arts: “poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate” (60).
Milton’s proposed curriculum, encompassing as it does grammar, arithmetic, geometry, religion, agriculture, geography, astronomy, physics, trigonometry, ethics, economics, languages, politics, the law, theology, church history as well as the “organic arts” of poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, is encyclopedic in scope. His main thrust in the educational enterprise remains, however, on that practical erudition which would serve both the individual in a moral sense and the state in a public sense, equipping people “to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages” (56). This stands in contrast to the contemplative and speculative concerns of
medieval education.
Influences from Renaissance humanism
As Ainsworth points out, “Milton, like other genuine humanists, cared little for virtue apart from practice, or for talent without principle” (15). Milton’s desire to marry scholarly pursuits to commitments of a professional and public nature is, as Ainsworth implies, an overriding characteristic of Renaissance humanismRenaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
(Witt 34). Briefly stated, the humanist educational agenda of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries included “a clearer consciousness, among teachers and students, of education as a discipline for active life”, combined with “an insistence on the more extensive reading of ancient writers both classical and Christian as a means of securing this discipline” and “an attitude of severe and hostile criticism toward medieval education and culture” (Ainsworth 8).