FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION II

RENAISSANCE PERIOD

Renaissance was the revival or rebirth of learning, a belief of dignity of human beings, a
renewed spirit of nationalism, an increase of trade among countries, a period of exploration.
Scientific research was used to solve problems, books were printed and thus made available to some
people, and there was a renewed interest in the classic.

HUMANISM

Away of thought and life concerned with the realization of the fullest human career. This
caused a general rise in the standard of education among the clergy, and increased the amount of
liberal education offered in the church schools. The most celebrated school was at Mantua in
northern Italy, on a site chosen because of its natural beauty. Near the classroom, and almost as
important, was the athletic field, a green meadow where students were taught running, fencing,
wrestling, and various games of ball. Athletics were important, not as a part of military training or
as an entertainment for spectators, but as an art which developed the body and personality.

AIM
The aim of education of northern humanism was more social than individual, social reform
and the improvement of human relationships. It aimed at eliminating ignorance of the common
people and the greed and hypocrisy of social leaders.
Many of the humanists, although themselves members of the clergy, criticized certain of the
religious practices of the time. Their leader was the Dutch scholar, Erasmus, who won universal
admiration or his wits and learning. Erasmus famous book, Praise of Folly, was a satire which found
something to make fun in all classes, not expecting the clergy. By calling attention to abuses and
encouraging people to think for themselves, even in religious matters. Erasmus bring about the
Protestant Reformation although many humanists, including Erasmus, remained Catholics.

HUMANISM AND EDUCATION

1. Allows for the individual development of talents and total fulfillment.

2. Encourages total involvement and participation.
3. Humanists teachers encourage students toward self-actualization and self-fulfillment.
4. Placing a value on humility and the individual.
5. Humanists teachers adapt readily to innovative teaching methods.
6. Teachers are creative and independent and encourage the same students.
7. Teachers work effectively with others and increase experiences and person-to-person
interactions.

REFORMATION

The great religious movement for the reformation of both doctrines and institution of the
Christian church. When a large group of German ruling princes and representatives of three cities
who had joined the reformers protested against the decision of the imperial forbidding any further
expansion of the reform. Its followers came to be called Protestants, and the name of Christianity
assumed to the name Protestantism.
Encouraged by Martin Luther’s example, Protestant reformers in many countries suggested
changes and found governments willing to support them. Together they formed a movement called
Protestant Reformation. The Protestants all denied that the Pope was the head of Christendom and
they urged men to go directly to the bible as the highest religious authority.
The leading French Protestant, John Calvin went further than Luther in removing images
and ornaments from churches, and he abolished all the rich ceremonial of worship used by the
Roman Catholics. His plan of church organization is called Presbyterian (a presbytery is a council
of ministers and laymen).
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AIM
The aim of the protestant reformers was religious moralism-living a worthy life will
guarantee a glorious life after. Education therefore, must provide adequate training in the duties of
the home, occupation, and the state.

Melanchthon, one of the greatest scholars, a survey in Germany the results of which became
the basis of the Saxony Plan. This was the first school system in History. One of the provisions of
this plan was the establishment of the secondary schools in every town under the support and
control of the state.

METHOD
Reading was taught by routine pronunciation of words, memorization of answers to
questions from gospel, hymns and psalms. Eventually, due to formalism, the protestant classroom
became a place of terror. Methods of teachings were rigid, discipline was harsh, and religious
indoctrination became the chief method.

THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION

The Catholic Counter-Reformation movement corrected the abuses of the church. Realizing
that the Protestants used education to further their ends, the Catholic used also education to win
back dissenters. Teaching orders and teaching congregations were founded, parish schools were
reorganized and seminaries were opened to train leaders.

AIM
The aim of Education of Roman Catholic education was religious moralism. Similar to the
aim of the Protestants except the approach where the latter develop a moral life through the
individual’s own interpretation of the bible, while the Catholic education aimed to develop an
unquestioning obedience to the authority of the church.

EDUCATIONAL METHODS
1. Designated to train leaders.
2. Designated to teach the poor.
3. Designated for spiritual salvation.

EDUCATIONAL REALISM

Realism refers to the philosophy of which holds that education should by concerned with the
actualization of life.

AIMS AND METHODS

Realists differed as to the methods by which such could achieve. This difference of opinion gave
rise to three groups:

1. Humanistic or Verbal Realists- aimed at a complete knowledge and understanding as to fit

the individual to the environment in which he lives.
From the point of view of this method, the verbal realists advanced the following ideas:
a. Vives- Education should develop personality

b. Rabelais- Aim of learning was the development of the whole man, incidental method
of teaching all learning to be made pleasant learning facilitated through natural
activities substituted for rote learning use of reference books.

c. Milton- Education was to prepare for actual living. Reading for content and nor for
syntax use for resource person in the classroom discussion and lectures by academic
authorities.
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2. Social Realists- were members of the aristocracy who aimed for education that would
develop the gentlemen and such an education could be best by direct contact with people
and their activities rather than books.
a. Montaigne- a social realist, proposed a broad education that would make a young
man of the world. Travel according to him would be most suitable so that school had
very little use. The private tutorial system became popular among the nobility. The
finishing schools and the private military academics of today are remnants of social
realism.

3. Sense Realists- advocated a type of education in which scientific content would be

introduced and the scientific method used. Four educational thinkers represent sense realism.
a. Richard Mulcaster- Children must be studied thoroughly and their innate abilities
respected make use of games, and exercise for learning purposes.

b. Francis Bacon- Give man dominance over things. He used the inductive method of
learning.

c. Wolgang Ratke- Developed a natural method of teaching, nothing is to be learned by

rote, repetition must be done as often as possible, learning by the senses first and
then exploration.

d. John Amos Comenius- The ultimate goal of education was eternal happiness with
God and education should prepare for the activities of life through knowledge,
learning should start from the senses, learning should proceed from the known to
unknown.

DISCIPLINISM

Disciplinism was characterized by two reactions during the first half of the 18 th
century: (1) the rise of formal discipline, and (2) the development of aristocracy of
reason or rationalism.
John Locke in some thoughts concerning education, strongly advocated the
disciplinary theory of education, believing that the mind of the child was a tabula rasa, a
blank tablet. He postulated that everything in the mind came from experience, which in
turn was based on the perception of the senses. He believed that the development came
only through formation of habits through discipline.

AIM
The aim of disciplinism was the formation of the habits through discipline.

METHOD
The mind could be developed by memorizing and abstract reasoning.

RATIONALISM

The rationalists upheld the right of each individual to his own opinion, liberty of
conscience, and freedom of thought. They believed that man could bring his own
reason , improved himself and his institutions, in order to bring about the general
welfare.

AIM
The rationalism aimed at developing an individual who could control all aspects of
his life by reason, suppress passions and display of feelings, to live in a highly artificial
society.
The education resulting from this aims was aristocratic, creating a class of illuminati.
They had no use for universal education, since they could not accept the idea that the
lower classes were capable of being educated.
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The old moral values were replaced by sexual laxity, immodesty, infidelity, and
extravagance. This was probably the period when ethics and morality were at their
lowest.

SOME OUTSTANDING LEADERS DURING THE RENAISSANCE

1. Martin Luther- a German reformer, the inaugurator of the protestant reformation, who insisted
on state-founded compulsory education for both sexes especially in the elementary level but also
compelled parents to send their children to school. This provision was considered one of the
most important influences of the reformation.

2. Vittorino Da Feltre- taught in the court schools of northern Italy and was believed to be one of
the first teachers to combine physical and mental activity in a school situation.

3. John Comemius- also known as Johann Amos, an educational reformer and writer. Poverty
delayed his education. His career included three phases, his church career, his research in the
organization of human knowledge, and his interest in practical education. His famous work, the
Great Didactic gives his theories and procedures of practical education.

4. John Locke- an English philosopher known as the intellectual ruler of the 18 th century, whose
theories and knowledge and political life are still widely felt. He protested against the time
devoted to study Latin and Greek and recommended a broader curriculum and physical training,
and strongly advocated the disciplinary theory of education.

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN THEORIES IN EDUCATION

The great movement of the 18th century and the beginning of the industrial revolution
aroused a profound humanitarian interest in the education of the masses.

1. Jean Jacques Rosseau- he was an educational theory based on naturalistic. Few books have such
profound influence on the theory and practice of education as he attracted the formal education
and insisted on nature as the best guide to the educational process.

2. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi- in his aim to psychologize education, he combined physical, moral,
intellectual, and manual work. His major emphasis on helping children to learn by experience
and observation, rather than by verbalism and memorization. His own writings (Leonard and
Gertrude 1781; How Gertrude Teaches Her Children, 1801), exercised a widespread influence.
His work came to a crucial point in the history of education, when nations were beginning to
establish systems of compulsory education.

3. Johann Freidrich Herbart- his principle was that ideas are developed in the mind through
external stimuli, and the ideas have a dynamic force which reaches out for new ideas. Based on
this principle, the teacher’s task is to select ideas in accordance with the pupil’s backgrounds, to
arouse the interest of the pupils, and gradually to build ideas into a moral and intellectual
structure. He advocated the cultural epochs theory, based on the premise that the growth of
children corresponds to the development of the culture through the ages. To put his theory into
practice, he formulated five steps of instruction: preparation, presentation, association,
generalization, and application.

4. Friedrich Froebel- his theory was based on the concept of the absolute as a creative force, of
which the child’s nature is a part. The function of the teacher is to promote the growth of the
child as a human plant in the direction of its own inner laws of growth. He stressed creative self-
development and spontaneous activity, making or unfolding the best in the child. He formulated
a philosophy of child development in his Education of Man, Pedagogics of the Kindergarten,
and Education by Development. As he worked out his history in his school at Keilhau, which
came to be known as the kindergarten. Froebel not only encourage play but elaborated series of
gifts and occupation which developed the idea of unity. In the curriculum he encouraged,
through language, song, and manual work. The kindergarten was not accepted in Germany but it
developed widely in the United States.
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5. Ms. Carl Schuurz - The first kindergarten was started by Ms. Carl Schuurz, for German
speaking in Wisconsin (1855); The first such institution for English speaking children was
established by Elizabeth Peabody in Boston (1860). The first public kindergarten was opened by
Susan Blow in St. Louis (1873). The leading exponent of the kindergarten idea in the US was
Professor Patty S. Hill of Teacher College, Columbia University. Still later, the spirit of
kindergarten was introduced in the infant’s schools of England and France, where, where some
aspects of the theory of Maria Montessori, an Italian Professor, were combined with it.

6. John Dewey- he brought a new concept of the social function of education. Dewey worked out
his theory in his experimental school, which was corrected with the University of Chicago. Two
principles dominated Dewey’s philosophy of education. The school is a preparation for life, it is
life and the school cannot be a preparation for social life except as it reproduces the typical
conditions of life. In other words, education must start with the interest, activities, and
experience of the child, the process is one of the constructing that experience through sharing
and participating in group and social activities, in order to develop intelligent members of
democracy.

SUMMARY

Both the idea of historical renewed and the use of the term Renaissance itself. Italian
scholars, historians, and students of the classics and often local patriots, begin to display a
remarkable new historical self-consciousness. They believed that their own time was a new age, at
once sharply different from barbaric darkness which they imagined had preceded it and comparable
in its achievements to Roman antiquity.

The history of Christianity during the Renaissance presents sharp contrast. In various ways,
the influence and prestige of the church were declining. Deeply rooted in older patterns of life and
traditional ways of thought, the ecclesiastical institution adapted slowly to new conditions; and its
leadership was often woefully inadequate to meet the challenges presented by increasingly assertive
national state or to satisfy the spiritual needs of growing numbers of townsmen

Doris Tulio, Ph D.

Compiled by:

DR. BILLY P. SIDDAYAO