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EDUCATION

HOW OLD THE NEW


BY


JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Litt. D.

Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous Diseases
at Fordham University School of Medicine; Professor of Physiological
Psychology at the Cathedral College, New York.



SECOND IMPRESSION



NEW YORK

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

1911



COPYRIGHT. 1910, BY

JAMES J. WALSH



Published October 20th, 1910

Second Impression March 20th, 1911


  THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
  RAMWAY, N.J.



TO THE

_Xavier Alumni Sodality_

Most of the thoughts contained in this volume were originally
expressed at our breakfasts. It seems only fitting, then, that on
presentation to a larger audience they should be dedicated to you.

J. J. W.
_Our Lady's Day._ August 15, 1910


{v}


PREFACE

The reason for publishing this volume of lectures and addresses is the
persuasion that present-day educators are viewing the history of
education with short-sighted vision. An impression prevails that only
the last few generations have done work of serious significance in
education. The history of old-time education is neglected, or is
treated as of at most antiquarian interest and there is a failure to
understand its true value. The connecting link between the lectures
and addresses is the effort to express in terms of the present what
educators were doing in the past. Once upon a time, when I proclaimed
the happiness of the English workmen of the Middle Ages, the very
positive objection was raised, "How could they be happy since their
wages were only a few cents a day?" For response it was only necessary
to point out that for his eight cents, the minimum wage by act of
Parliament, the workman could buy a pair of handmade shoes, that being
the maximum price established by law, and other necessaries at similar
prices. If old-time education is studied with this same care to
translate its meaning into modern values, then the very oldest
education of which we have any record takes on significance even for
our time.

{vi}

While it is generally supposed that there are many new features in
modern education, it requires but slight familiarity with educational
history to know that there is very little that is novel. Such
supposedly new phases as nature-study and technical training and
science, physical as well as ethical, are all old stories, though they
have had negative phases during which it would be hard to to trace
them. The more we know about the history of education the greater is
our respect for educators at all times. Nearly always they had a
perfectly clear idea of what they were trying to do, they faced the
problems of education in quite the same spirit that we do and often
solved them very well. Indeed the results of many periods of old-time
education are much better than our own, even when judged by our
standards.

Unfortunately there exists a very common persuasion that evolution
plays a large role in education and that we, "the heirs of all the
ages in the foremost files of time," are necessarily in the forefront
of educational advance. There has been much progress in education in
the last century, but it would, indeed, be a hopeless world if there
had not been progress out of the depths in which education was plunged
in the eighteenth century. There were a number of reformers in
education at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century. It was rather easy to be an educational reformer
at that time. The lowest period in the history of {vii} education was
about the middle of the eighteenth century. It has been assumed that
since we are far ahead of that generation we must be still farther
ahead of the people who preceded them. That is the mistake. There are
periods of education of very great significance centuries long before
that time.

In educational lectures and addresses for the past five years, I have
been trying to translate into modern terms the meaning of these old
periods of education. A great many teachers have thought the ideas
valuable and suggestive and so I am tempted to publish them in book
form. There is an additional reason, that of wishing to create a bond
of sympathy between the two systems of education that have grown up in
this country. For some three generations now Catholic educators have
been independently building up a system of education from the
elementary schools to the university. The American world of education
is coming to recognize how much they have accomplished. There has even
been some curiosity expressed as to how it was all done in spite of
apparently insuperable obstacles. One phase of Catholic education, its
thorough-going conservatism and definite effort to value the past
properly and take advantage of its precious lessons, is here
represented.

My own educational interests have been taken up much more of late
years with medicine than with other phases of this subject. Hence the
{viii} volume contains certain addresses relating to the history of
medical education. They are more intimately linked with the general
subject of education than might perhaps be thought. We have had finely
organized medical education at a number of times in the past, and,
indeed, at the present moment can find inspiration and incentive in
studying the legal regulation of medicine and of medical education in
what might seem to be so-unpromising a time as the thirteenth century.
For true educational progress there has always been need of close
sympathy between the non-professional and the professional department
of universities. Only when the professional schools are real graduate
departments, requiring under-graduate training for admission, is the
university doing its work properly. This was the rule in the
past--hence the precious lessons for the present in the story of
these old-time universities.

These lectures and addresses were actually delivered, not merely read.
They were written with that purpose. Certain repetitions that would
have been avoided if the articles had been prepared directly for
reading and not for an audience, may be noted. Some of the subjects
overlap and certain phases had to be treated usually in variant form
in different lectures. For these faults the reader's indulgence is
craved.



CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                               PAGE

I.    EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW                         8

II.   THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY                       63

III.  MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES                 93

IV.   IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION                          155

V.    CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE       199

VI.   THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION                273

VII.  ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION                    299

VIII. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS    349

IX.   UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS                       377

X.    THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE                          403

XI.   NEW ENGLANDISM                                   433




EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW




  "Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say:
  Behold this is new: For it hath already gone before in the ages that
  were before us."
  --_Ecclesiastes i:10_.


  "Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius."
  --Terence, _Eun. Prol.,_ 41.
  [Nothing is now said which was not said before.]


  St. Jerome relates that his preceptor Donatus, commenting on this
  passage of Terence, used to say: "Pereant qui ante nos nostra
  dixerunt."
  [May they perish who said our good things before us.]


{3}

EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW [Footnote 1]

  [Footnote 1: Material for this lecture was gathered for one of a
  course of lectures on Phases of Education delivered at St Mary's
  College, South Bend, Ind., at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kenwood,
  Albany, N. Y., and at St. Mary's College, Monroe, Mich, 1909. In
  somewhat developed form it was delivered to the public school
  teachers of New Orleans at the beginning of 1910. In very nearly its
  present form it was the opening lecture at the course of the
  Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, on "How Old the New Is,"
  delivered in the spring of 1910.]

Popular lectures are usually on some very up-to-date subject. Indeed,
as a rule they are on subjects that are developing at the moment, and
the main aim of the lecturer is to forecast the future. It is before a
thing has happened that we want to know about it now, and though, as
not infrequently occurs, the lecturer's forecast does not in the event
prove him a prophet nor the son of a prophet, for nature usually
accomplishes her purposes more simply than the closet philosopher
anticipates, at least we have the satisfaction for the moment of
thinking that not only are we up to date but a little ahead of it.
Unfortunately I have to claim your indulgence this evening in this
matter, for taking just the opposite course. I am to talk about the
oldest book in the world, its old-fashioned yet novel contents, its
up-to-date applications, and its significance for the history of the
race and, above all, the history of education. The {4} one interesting
feature, as I hope, of what I have to say, is that old-time methods in
education as suggested by this little volume are strangely familiar
and its contents are as significant now as they were in the old time
from which it comes. The book was written almost as long before
Solomon as Solomon is before us, yet there is a depth of practical
wisdom about it that eminently recalls the expression "there is
nothing new under the sun."

So much attention has been given to education in recent years, we have
made such a prominent feature of it in life, have spent so much money
on it, have devoted so much time and thought to its development and
organization, that we feel very sure that what we are doing now in
every line of educational effort represents--indeed must represent--a
great advance over anything and everything that was ever accomplished
in the past. To say anything else would seem to most people pure
pessimism. It would mean that in spite of all the efforts of men we
were not making advances. As a matter of fact, all of us know that it
is quite possible to make heroic efforts so sadly misdirected that
they accomplish nothing and get us nowhere. Progress depends not on
effort but on the proper direction of the effort. We are supposed,
however, to represent one phase and that at the front rank of an
inevitable advance in things human, pushed forward, as it were, by the
wheel of evolution in its ceaseless progress, and bound {5} therefore
to make advancement. It is with this idea, so commonly accepted, that
I would take issue by showing how much was accomplished in the past
that anticipates much of what we are occupied with at the present
time, and that serves to show what men can accomplish at any time when
they set themselves to doing things with high ideals, well-considered
purpose and strenuous effort.

There are those who insist that unless men have the encouraging
feeling that they are making progress, their efforts are likely to be
less strenuous than would otherwise be the case. There are those who
think apparently that compliments make the best incentive for
successful effort. Some of us who know that the world's best work, or
at least the work of many of the world's great men, has been done in
the midst of opposition, in the very teeth of criticism, in spite of
discouragement, may not agree with that opinion. The history of
successful accomplishment seems to show, indeed, that incentive is all
the stronger as the result of the opposition which arouses to renewed
efforts and the criticism which strips whatever is new of errors that
inevitably cling to it at the beginning. On the other hand, if there
is anything that the lessons of history make clear it is that
self-complacency is the very worst thing, above all for intellectual
effort of any kind, and that criticism, when judicious, is always
beneficial.

Above all, comparisons are likely to be {6} chastening in their
effects to make us realize that what we are doing at any particular
time does not mean so much more than what many others have done and
may indeed even mean less. It is rather interesting, then, to set our
complacent assurance that we are doing such wonderful work in
education and represent such magnificent progress over against some of
the educational work of the past. After all we are not nearly so
self-congratulatory about our education, its ways and methods and,
above all, its success as we were a dozen years ago. There are many
jarring notes of discordant criticism of methods heard, there are many
deprecatory remarks passed with regard to our supposed success, and
there have been some educators unkind enough,--and, unfortunately,
they are often of the inner circle of our educational life,--to say
that we are lacking in scholarship to a great degree, and that much of
our so-called educational progress has been a tendency toward an
accumulation of superficial information rather than a training of the
intellect for power. The absolute need of the distinction between
education for information and for power has been coming home to us.
Above all, we have felt that we were not a little deceived by
appearances in education and so are more ready to listen to
suggestions of various kinds.

Under these circumstances it has seemed to me, that a calling of
attention to what was accomplished at certain long-past periods for
{7} education, would not only be of interest as information for
teachers, but might possibly be helpful or at least suggestive, in the
midst of the somewhat disordered state of mind that has resulted from
recent criticisms of our educational methods and success, by men whose
interest in education cannot be doubted and whose opportunities for
knowing are the best. For we are in a time when nearly every important
educator, president of a university, dean of a department, old-time
teacher or old, thoughtful pupil with the interest of _Alma Mater_ at
heart, who has had something to say with regard to education has said
it in rather derogatory fashion. Perhaps, then, it will do us good to
study the periods of the past and see what they did, how their methods
differed or still more often were like our own, what their success was
like and what we may learn from them. The surprising thing is the
number of repetitions of present-day experiences in education that we
shall find in the past. This is true, however, in every mode of
thinking quite as well as in education, once careful investigation of
conditions is made.

If we begin at the beginning and take what is sometimes called the
oldest book in the world, we shall see how early definite educational
ideas took form. It is a set of moral lessons or instructions given,
or supposed to be given, by a father to his son. The father's name was
Ptah Hotep. He was a vizier of King Itosi of the Fifth Dynasty in
Egypt, some time about 3500 B.C. {8} The Egyptologists used to date
him earlier than that, but in recent years they have been clipping
centuries off Egyptian dates until perhaps King Itosi must be
considered as having lived probably not earlier than 3350 B.C. That
makes very little difference for our purpose, however. The oldest
manuscript copy of the book was written apparently not later than 2900
b.c. It exists as the famous Prisse Papyrus in the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris. There is another copy in the British Museum. There
is a pretty thorough agreement as to these dates, so that we can be
sure that this little book which has come to be known as the
Instruction of Ptah Hotep, or the Proverbs of Ptah Hotpu--another form
of his name with a variation in the title--represents the wisdom of
the generations who lived in Egypt about 5000 years ago. It was
written, as I have said, almost as long before Solomon as Solomon is
before us, so that the character of the moral instructions which it
contains is extremely interesting.

There must have been a number of copies of it made. This and books
like it were used as schoolbooks in Egypt. They were employed somewhat
as we employ copybooks. The writing of the manuscript is the old
hieratic, cursive writing of the Egyptians, not their hieroglyphics,
and the children used portions of this book as copies, listened to
dictation from it and learned to write the language by imitating it.
Of books similar to it we have a number of manuscript copies. Some {9}
of these copies preserved from before 2000 B.C. are full of errors
such as school children would make in taking down dictation. This was
their method of teaching spelling, and after the children had spelled
the words the teacher went over them and corrected the mistakes. These
corrections were made in a different  ink from that used by the
pupils! The whole system of teaching, as it thus comes before us,
resembles our own elementary school teaching much more than we might
think possible. Spelling, writing, composition are all taught in this
way yet, or at least they were when I was at school, and while I have
heard that some of the old-fashioned methods were going out, I have
also received some hints of the reaction by which they are coming in
again, so that the Egyptian methods take on a new interest.

Perhaps there is no more interesting feature of the education of that
olden time than the fact that these books which were used as copybooks
in the school contain moral lessons. We have been neglecting these