Studies Restoration and Georgian views of upper-class education, finding the debate between advocates of private tutoring and nascent public schooling encapsulated its main goals: individual virtue, public service, scholarly and worldly knowledge, and sociability (good breeding). Of these, virtue was most valued. The Middle Ages had looked to nobles and gentry for military service; in the Renaissance (i.e., the Tudor era), statesmanship came to the fore. Though the Puritans had unsuccessfully attempted to introduce vocational training and the Reformation retreated toward the old tradition of indifference – pedantry was to be feared – upper-class men in the 18th century nonetheless relied on education to buttress their forming the social elite. Patriotic content was expected: history, government, law, political thought running along English lines. Much of the monograph is given to contemporary exposition, notably from Locke and 4th Earl of Chesterfield as well as clergy and schoolmasters. Contemporaries address the nature and extent of English ignorance, comparison with the continent, the value of the grand tour, and so on. Tutors remained most fashionable though the advantage of schools competition with peers was beginning to surface.
Education
10. Bostert, ed., Newhall and Williams College (14 June 2023)
Collected letters of Richard Newhall, one of Williams College’s foremost history professors, a dean of the faculty, and wartime stand-in president. Arranged by topic rather than chronology, the assemblage demonstrates the views of a Harvard-trained, (medieval) Europeanist dedicated to teaching rather than research, whose characteristic approach was to expose ignorance so as to promote humility, to encourage self-discovery is the basis of real education. A World War I officer and casualty, he emphasized facts as evidence of decision making and outcomes – how leaders managed important affairs – while disfavoring documentary sources as tending toward abstract ideas which would mislead one from the heart of the matter. Decisions, like journalism and history, were always made with partial evidence. It was appropriate to give actors the benefit of the doubt, and more important for businessmen and lawyers to learn about what we know was done than to prepare for research degrees or to search for the absolute (a ‘mental disease’, according to a favored colleague). The teacher himself must be willing to be forgotten.
His influence on Hyde, Waite, Bahlman, and Bostert are evident. The latter’s narration is useful if sometimes repetitive, notably the summation that history and scholarship had moved over 1920-70 from understanding and explanation to post facto criticism and challenge, from the dispassionate to the ideological.
Well footnoted so as to identify contemporary academics and politicians, the book’s themes include comparison of military training to education (the former suppresses individualism, the latter cultivates it with a view toward citizenship); faculty debate over isolationism, college administration, curricular changes (e.g., instruction in classics, mandatory chapel); and sundry academic and political matters. A review should tell what the author attempted and whether he succeeded by his own standards, since it was unlikely the reviewer could match the scholar in the latter’s specialty. Newhall helped Bailyn transition from English to history by recommending his Harvard application ignore lack of undergraduate studies. Politically a Wilsonian who nonetheless believed political leaders knew more than journalists (and presumably bureaucrats?), he came to be a neoconservative avant la lettre.
22. Haskins, Rise of Universities (4 Dec 2015)
A collection of 3 lectures sketching the foundation of European universities in 12th-century Europe, reviewing the schools of Bologna and Paris, the professor, and the student. Asserts the Renaissance really began with this new institution (which lacked many modern trappings — buildings). Otherwise seems antiquarian.