The Reformation and Education
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The death of the righteous man and the death of the sinner, illustration from a pictorial catechism, end of nineteenth century (colour litho), French School, (19th century)/Private Collection/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images
Religious educators developed the catechistic method of instruction. Catechisms, religious textbooks, were organized into questions and answers that summarized the particular denomination’s doctrines and practices (Photo 3.3). Students were expected to memorize the set answers and to recite them as the teacher read the particular questions. Although memorization had always been a feature of schooling, the catechistic method reinforced it. The belief was that if children memorized the catechism, they would internalize the doctrines of their church. The question-and-answer format gained such a powerful hold on teaching methods that it was also used to teach secular subjects such as history and geography. For example, Calvin’s Catechism of the Church of Geneva used the question and answer method: Master: What is the chief end of human life? Scholar: To know God by whom men were created. In the nineteenth century, the same method appeared in Davenport’s History of the United States: Q. When did the battle of Lexington take place? . On the 19th of April, 1775; here was shed the first blood in the A American Revolution.66
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Photo 3.3 Illustration from a catechism shows the death of a religiously righteous man.
catechistic method of instruction Catechisms—religious
textbooks—were organized into questions and answers that summarized the particular denomination’s doctrines and practices.
Religious and economic change worked to increase primary (elementary) school attendance and literacy rates. The Protestant emphasis on Bible reading caused more children, both girls and boys, to attend primary vernacular schools. The middle classes (the commercial and merchant sectors) sent their children to school to learn the practical skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. For example, only 10 percent of men and 2 percent of women in England were literate in 1500. By 1600, literacy rates had increased to 28 percent for men and 9 percent for women; by 1700, nearly 40 percent of English men and about 32 percent of English women were literate. Literacy rates tended to be higher in northern than in southern and eastern Europe and in urban rather than rural areas.67 John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises on the Doctrine and Worship of the Church, II, trans. Henry Beveride (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958), p. 37; and Bishop Davenport, History of the United States (Philadelphia: William Marchall and Co., 1833), p. 31. 67 Mary Jo Maynes, Schooling in Western Europe: A Social History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985). 66
1459 Gutenberg Bible published 1469 Lorenzo di Medici assumes power in Florence 1498 Vasco da Gama and Portuguese fleet in India
1512 Erasmus’s de Copia published
1513 Machiavelli’s The Prince published
1460 1500 1560 1600
1511 Erasmus’s Praise of Folly published
1516 Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier published
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