96 THE SCHOOL 



The critical movement in thought and the revolution in economic 

 processes have profoundly shaken the old order of ideas, and with 

 them the various established traditions of social conduct which in 

 considerable measure rested upon them and had grown out of them. 

 To the great majority of human beings the firmest kind of educa- 

 tion is that w r hich results from the impalpable but steady influence of 

 a stable social environment. The silent pressure of such an environ- 

 ment molds the thoughts, directs the sympathies, shapes the purpose, 

 upholds the will, and fixes the way of life. Such an environment 

 embodies a long tradition. It is venerable with precedent and tough 

 with habit. At its best it is consecrated by a thousand pictures, 

 and means brotherhood, loyalty to a beloved tradition, and memories 

 hallowed by death. But much of this educational inheritance the 

 stress and changes of our modern life have weathered away. The 

 disappearance of the old order in its thousand different forms and 

 implications was inevitable. Often its disappearance was a boon, 

 but sometimes an incalculable loss. And much of the great develop- 

 ment of popular education from the time of Pestalozzi onwards has 

 been due to an effort, often conscious, sometimes instinctive, to repair, 

 if it be possible, this loss of the old upholding environment by the 

 more deliberate efforts of the school. The relative importance of the 

 school has grown through the decay of other forms of virtually educa- 

 tional tradition. If the aim of education is to prepare a child for the 

 life which he will have to live, increase of schools does not necessarily 

 mean a proportionate increase of real education. What existed 

 before may have been in a true sense education, though less intel- 

 lectual in form and less organized in its presentation. 



Ill 



If we examine the great educational traditions or school systems 

 of the medieval and modern world, we find that they fall into six 

 main groups according to their dominant purpose. 



(1) The chief design of some of them has been to initiate their 

 pupils into the manners, the tone of thought, and the point of view, 

 as well as into the necessary accomplishments, of some fairly well- 

 defined class or profession. Such, for example, was the business of 

 the knightly education of the Middle Ages. Such, again, was the aim 

 of Madame de Maintenon's school at St. Cyr, and a similar, though 

 not precisely formulated purpose has influenced the educational 

 tradition of great schools like Eton. (2) A second group is formed 

 by those schools which were intended to maintain the tenets and 

 the intellectual presuppositions of some great section of the com- 

 munity. Such, for example, were the schools founded under the 

 influence of Luther and Melancthon, the schools of the Jesuits, 

 Calvin's school at Geneva, Sturm's at Strasburg, the schools of the 



