THE USE, MISUSE AND ABUSE OF TEXT BOOKS.
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��come together every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying." The world's teachers in past ages were educated without helps, except from the living voice. The Greeks and Romans were well trained by reading, studying and criticising their own standard au- thors. The writing of themes and pub- lic declamations daily constituted the chief mental training of Greek and Ro- man statesmen, orators, historians, poets and philosophers. Science, so far as they cultivated it, was taught by prob- lems, theorems, dictation and lectures. Libraries were few, text-books rare, and tutorial helps unknown. In the dark ages, Latin and Greek authors were the chief objects of study. In logic, rhetoric and metaphysics, Aristotle has been the great educator of all the generations of scholars that have lived since his day. His works gave birth to the scholastic philosophy and to modern dialectics. The text-books that existed prior, to the seventeenth century were chiefly grammars and lexicons for the study of the learned tongues, and commentaries on the ancient poets and philosophers. The physical sciences were almost un- known, and mathematics included only arithmetic and geometry. From the fifth to the fifteenth century, learning be- longed chiefly to the clergy. v Schools and colleges were founded for their ben- efit. Between the Conquest, A. D. 1066, and the death of King John, one hundred and fifty years,five hundred and fifty-seven religious houses of all kinds were estab- lished in England. This would be equiv- alent, in a population of perhaps two and a half millions, to the founding of several thousand colleges, in a similar period, with ten times the population and one hundred times as much wealth as they possessed. It must be remembered that these monasteries were all richly en- dowed. A single monastery has fed five hundred beggars daily for years. They owned large landed estates, with impos- ing and commodious buildings and libra- ries of respectable size, when a manu- script was worth as much as a small farm. The chief schools of the age were
��connected with religious houses. A small number or secular schools existed, in large cities, for laymen. London had three in the reign of Henry II. The twelfth century is the age of new univer- sities. These institutions first existed as schools or u studies" before they were incorporated as universities. The oldest are those of Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford is said to have been founded by Alfred, because there existed a school in that city in his day. In 1109, Cambridge University was set up, in a barn, by three monks from Croyland. This private enterprise grew so rapidly that, in less than one century from its humble beginning. Peter of Blois, the historian, says of it: "From this little fountain, which hath swelled into a great river, we now behold the city of God made glad and all England rendered fruitful by many teachers and Doctors issuing from Cambridge after the like- ness of holy Paradise."
The studies of this period were em- braced in the celebrated trivium and quadrivium of the schools; the first com- preheuaing grammar, rhetoric and logic ; the second, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. These seven studies constituted the whole curriculum of a liberal education . The mastery of these, by seven years of toil, made a man mas- ter of arts, and authorized him, with con- sent of the magnates, to set up a schola or studium of his own and become a learned Doctor in the liberal arts. The process of instruction was principally by dictation and lectures on the part of the teachers, and by themes and discussions on the part of the pupils. The historian informs us that in a very few years after the opening of a school in Cambridge the number of scholars had increased so much that there was no barn, house or church capable of containing them. Con- sequently they divided their flock and met in different parts of the town where they could find temporary accommoda- tions. " Brother Odoread grammar, ac- cording to the doctrine of Priscian, to the younger students in the morning At one o'block brother Terricius, a most acute sophist, read the logic of Aristotle to those who were more advanced. At
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