Education and the Rampart of Freedom

New Zealand Tablet, 17 November 1921, Page 9

Education and the Rampart of Freedom

(By John C. Reville, 8.J., in America.)

In the introduction to the thirteenth volume of his History of the German People, Janssen paints the degradation of German literature from the outbreak of the Reformation to the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. In a few bold strokes he shows how all sense of beauty had disappeared, and all feeling for "simple loveliness of expression" had been lost. The popular drama had sunk to the "deepest mire of degradation" popular romances of the most immoral kind poisoned the minds of the people. "Narrative literature lent itself wholly to the service of the preposterous and absurd, to nightmares of superstition, witchcraft and demonology, in which the devil was always a favorite figure. Satan, indeed at that period played a leading part on the stage of the world and humanity. He reigned supreme in life and fiction." This deterioration of the national literature, adds the historian, is chiefly responsible for the verdict often passed on the closing period of the Middle Ages,—that they were days of intellectual decay, and that the Church of Rome was more or less answerable for the "tremendous bankruptcy of-German national life." Yet the period thus condemned for its barrenness was one of vigorous intellectual activity. The pursuit of knowledge was not confined to the cabinet of the scholar. Through the schools it permeated the masses of the people. In the words of Janssen, "a deeply-Christian theory of life" dominated masters and students alike; men, for instance, like Alexander Hegius of Wesel, a practical educator, whose cardinal principle was that true intellectual culture is bound up with devotion to Christ; men like Rudolph von Langen and Murmellius of Minister, whose schools attracted scholars from far and wide. The period so decried was the age of Jacob Wimpheling, whose pedagogical treatises were known throughout Germany; of Geiler von Kaisersberg, popular orator of Strassburg; of Zasius, the jurist; of Johann Muller and Nicholas do Cusa, pioneers of ' modern astronomical science; of Johann von Dalberg, the Maecenas of his day. It was the age of flourishing schools like those of Zwickau, which in 1490 had 900 pupils; of Emmerich, on the Lower Rhine, with' 1500 in 1521; of Schlettstadt, developed under Ludwig Dringeriburg, whose scholars in 1517 amounted to 900." But the Lutheran agitation, turmoil in the State, the controversies and polemics that followed the revolt of the Wittenberg doctor, the quarrels that divided Germany after the apostate had set prince against, prince, and roused the peasants against their masters, soon destroyed the work of the preceding years. The words of Erasmus were verified: "Where Lutheranism reigns, letters decay and die." In his manifesto of 1524, to the burgomasters -and town-councillors of Germany, Luther complained that the schools were everywhere in decay. Five years later he wrote that town-councils and municipal authorities allowed the schools to go to ruin. In the famous sermon of 1530, to the children, the same charge is made. Since individuals and his own Church were so negligent, in order to refill the deserted classrooms, he advised the "Turkish custom of compulsory attendance." He thus abdicated the rights of the family and the Church into the hands of the State. If rulers, Luther argued, can compel their subjects to carry the spear and musket and go to war, "how much more are they bound to compel them to send their children to school." As yet the fcheojy of a State monopoly of education was not fully developed, but with Luther's views of the omnipotence of the commonwealth firmly held by the Reformer and his followers, that conclusion was not far off. As far back as 1521, the apostate, John Ebelin de Gunzbourg, had asserted that the State .should be charged with the duties of the teacher arid that instruction should be obligatory and free. Four

years after, Luther writing to the Elector of Saxony, drew a dark picture of the condition of education throughout Germany, and - concluded that unless the Government should organise and support the whole system, there would remain neither scholars nor schools. But the times were not ripe for the full development of the monopolistic ideas outlined by the Reformer. It takes time for a principle to make its way. The theory was held on greatly by the Regalist School, partisan of the absolutist doctrines so much in favor with the postReformation princes, and unfortunately not confined to Protestant countries or Protestant kings. It received an indirect support from the false views laid down in the "Emile" of Rousseau, and reached its climax in the repeated attempt made in France under the First Empire, the Monarchy and the Republic to make the State the solo arbiter of the destinies of the child. Instances of that policy of autocratic control over higher education at least, may be seen in Spain as far back as 1593. In that year, Philip 11. made an invidious distinction between academic degrees and titles conferred upon physicians and the professional rights accorded them. The latter, the monarch reserved to his own. royal authority. His successor, Philip IV., went further and specified that grammar schools were to be erected in such localities only as he deemed suitable. The order was renewed by Ferdinand VI. in 1747. In the erection of his Cole gin Academico for the advancement of primary teaching, Charles 111. there centralised all the instrumentalities and powers hitherto allowed full freedom of action and development in the competitive, trend of primary education. The Colegio, according to its charter, was to take precedence in all things, and transcend every other establishment of its kind in the kingdom. It was to foster the spirit of religion and train children to the exercise of the Christian virtues. The king, moreover, claimed that the functions marked out were one of the most important economic and police duties of the State. Going still farther, but this time in the matter of secondary education, Charles 111., by a royal decree of 1770, rendered necessary by the exile of the Jesuits, which had completely disorganised the whole scheme of secondary education, outlined one of the most complete programmes of State education devised up to that time. The number of professors' chairs was determined, a programme was laid down, the minutest officers were appointed. Even the nomination of porters, ushers, and caretakers and sweepers became matters of royal deliberation and ruling. The monarch provided and legislated for the literary and spiritual welfare of the pupils, the worthy reception of the Sacraments at stated times, the periods of study, the holidays, the whole scholastic life in a, word, both of students and professors. All this was for all intents and purposes a monopoly of education in its secondary branches. His successor, Charles IV., did for the study of medicine what his predecessor had done for secondary schools. He obliged all medical faculties and colleges to conform to the medical programme and requirements of the Cottegio San Carlos of Madrid, an attempt similar to that of the medical associations in the United States, which, self -appoint guardians of medical standards, and without any authority whatever, classify medical colleges as they see fit and force them to adopt their arbitrary regulations. But Charles- IV. witnessed the disastrous effects of State control. So unsatisfactory were the results of the centralising tendencies of his predecessor, that he abolished the law which made the Colegio Aeademico an educational autocrat. In his royal decree of February 11, 1804, he was obliged, after witnessing the deplorable effects of the f attempted monopoly to admit that reason and experience alike, prove the fatal consequences resulting from the restriction- of the teacher's functions to a privileged few. These chosen ones, continued the King, enjoy the exclusive title and honors of teacher and professor. They deprive others, distinguished by their virtues and learning, of the, right to teach and thus to reap the fruit of their labor. • They prevent many from following their vocation to which their inclinations and their talents call them, they debar the public from the benefits produced in all the branches of the State by honorable rivalry and competition, and force it to make use of the services of men who, sure of position and employment, do little to equip themselves more .

thoroughly for their duties. Seldom, we think, have the evils of a State monopoly of education been so forcibly expressed. The words of the royal critic deserve still more weight when we remember that he had once been the 0 champion of the system which he was now obliged to condemn. (Ruiz Amado's La Leyenda del Estado Ensenanfe, Cap. x, p., 119.55). Everywhere, tyrants and autocrats see in the control of education by the State, an instrument for the furthering of their high-handed plans. While in Spain the Bourbons used it for their ambitious designs, the Hapsburgs ' in Austria were following the same dangerous policy. Emperor Joseph 11., "my brother, the sacristan," as Frederick the Great used to call him, absolutely enslaved education. Its primary and higher branches were under his complete control... The universities, the seminaries, were degraded into mere instruments of the police power of tho Empire. Professors, courses, programmes, textbooks, vacations, examinations, degrees, all were regulated by imperial decree. Professors were State officials and in seminaries supposed to teach Catholic doctrines and to train the future priests of his Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, Janssenists, and unbelievers held chairs of dogmatic and moral theology. The State had turned teacher, and it taught as it liked and only such doctrines as were calculated to make its pupils its pliant tools. And, indeed, States have never followed any other programme. <X*>