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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). Samuel Hartli(eb (ca 1600 &ndash 1662 was a German Briton Polymath, an expert in many subjects called "the Great Intelligencer of Europe" John Milton ( 9 December, 1608 – 8 November, 1674) was an English Poet, Prose Polemicist and 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).

Contents

Influences

The influences at work in the tractate are an interesting blend of Renaissance humanism with its emphasis on the via activa, tempered by the more contemplative medieval concern with personal redemption. Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement beginning in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century 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). Scholasticism was the dominant form of theology and philosophy in the Latin West in the Middle Ages, particularly in the 12th 13th and 14th centuries This article is about Western European institutions See also Medieval university (Asia and Byzantine university Medieval university

Important individual influences on Milton’s tractate include Spanish educator Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) and Moravian educator John Comenius (1592-1670). John Amos Comenius (Jan Amos Komenský Ján Amos Komenský Johann Amos Comenius Jan Amos Komeński Comenius Ámos János latinized: Iohannes Amos Comenius 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 classical Philosophy, dialectic (διαλεκτική is controversy the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating Propositions 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).

Milton’s educational views

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 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). A cleric ( Ancient Greek κληρικός - klērikos clergyman (pl 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. In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. 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 quadrivium, which turned its attention to the theoretical in the world of number, including the study of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The quadrivium comprised the four subjects or arts taught in Medieval universities after the trivium. These two foundational programmes prepared the medieval university student for the study of philosophy and theology with its heavy emphasis on dialectical reasoning. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Theology is the study of a god or the gods from a religious perspective

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, rhetoric and logic, is encyclopedic in scope. Rhetoric has had many definitions no simple definition can do it justice Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and Inference. 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 humanism (Witt 34). Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement beginning in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century 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).

The changing demands of society

The shift in educational concerns evident in the Renaissance was informed by the changing structure of society at this time. The ecclesiastical world of the Middle Ages, which was well served by its clerics, slowly gave way, in the sixteenth century, to a burgeoning bureaucratic world, served by the clerks who oiled the machinery of government, “keeping records, accounts, and correspondence” (Viswanathan 349). A linguistic and salvational emphasis in education was no longer tenable as the Puritans came to demand a general and practical education for their children. A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was an associate of any number of religious groups advocating for more "purity" of Worship and Doctrine, Education thus became concerned with “instilling into students a consciousness of themselves as national subjects” where moral concerns were public as well as private (Viswanathan 350). Milton’s tractate fits well into this trajectory in its accommodation of education “to the needs of an age” (Ainsworth 42).

References

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