Education
as a religious imperative
Calvin, with Luther, was a hugely influential
Protestant reformer who attacked the Catholic Church and worked towards a
return to a more basic form of Christianity based on a personal relationship
between God the creator and his subjects. It is also important to remember that
his intellectual lineage from St Augustine, so predestination, sin and eternal
damnation figured large in his theological beliefs. In education, this reformed
approach gave new impetus to self-improvement and universal schooling, made
possible by the massive rise of printed books.
School
as secular salvation
We must know only God and ourselves through
scripture. Idolatry and ritual were to be shunned. We are fallen creatures,
with the burden of original sin and have to find redemption through Christ.
This fight against sin was to shape schooling and education in
Northern Europe and North America for
centuries, with its deficit model, matched by righteous schoolmasters who had
to drill, beat and moralise leaners into improvement. Discipline, attention and
punctuality were to become the virtues of the schoolroom. Illich thought that
Calvinism had literally shaped schooling as we know it, with school as the new
form of secular salvation.
Universal
education
His second influence is on his emphasis one universal
education from an early age. Education was part of the Protestant mission and compulsory
schooling was to be encouraged for all and so he encouraged the building of
schools and free schooling for all, especially the poor. Through reformers like
John Knox, schools were formed in every parish and they were to shape the
Prussian model under Friedrich Wilhelm I, then the Napoleonic model and much of
modern institutional learning, even into North America.
Calvin
and print
Literacy was a virtue as it enabled the personal
study of scripture direct from the printed word. Luther was another great
influence on this policy. As an active promoter of the new publishing industry,
he saw our personal relationship with God being truly mediated, not by the
church and priests, but through personal reflection. Calvin’s support for the printed
word, mostly scripture, came at a time in Europe when the print revolution was
exploding and as books were no longer scarce, reading became a major pedagogic
force.
Teaching
as preaching
Perhaps his most enduring, influence is on
preaching, exposition and the repetition as pedagogic techniques. In other
words, the traits of the preacher were to become that of the teacher. Regular
singing of Psalms, repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, moral assemblies each
morning all made their way into schooling, reinforced in the Victorian era when
schooling became compulsory and large numbers of children had to be looked
after and schooled, as their parents were working in factories. We are still
mired in this protestant pedagogy, if not its theological predilictions.
Criticism
It has been argued that the Reformation, and
Calvinism in particular, sees education as the rectification of weakness and
not the building of strengths. What is produced and exposed is not success but
failure, leading to fixed curricula, obsessive testing and a deficit model that
interprets education in pathological terms. It can also be argued that many of
the institutional behaviours and practices in schools regiment children in a
way that as unnatural and unnecessarily restrictive. Morning assemblies, the
teacher as transmitter of knowledge , rows of desks, bells on the hour, drill
and practice, can be seen as strict Calvinist practices, where students are
regarded as sinful beings that have to be saved from ignorance.
Conclusion
Calvin’s influence on education through
universal schooling has been immense, as is his influence on attitudes towards
education as a deficit model, where the students are seen from the start as a
flawed creatures. This led to methods of teaching that are only now being
re-examined. In a sense Calvin has been a curse and a blessing, with his
emphasis on the virtues of education combined with the vices of, for example, teachers
as preachers.
Bibliography
Calvin,
J. Institutes for the Christian Religion
Tillich,
Paul, (1968) History of Christian Thought, New York: Harper and Row
Reid,
W. S. (1972) John Calvin: His Influence on the Western World, Michigan:
Zondervan
Graham, W. Fred (1971), The Constructive Revolutionary: John
Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press
Helm, Paul (2004),John
Calvin's Ideas, Oxford
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