Education During the Middle Ages and iGen of Today

What we are today is because of yesterday. Even though it is a bold statement, yet, the fact is that the very way of acting, behaving and thinking is based on a system of pedagogy - paideia, (παιδεία) education, which is nurtured firstly, by the Greeks and secondly, by the Latins.  Experiments on education continue even today.  Once again interest in classical education is beginning to generate at the wake of internet culture and the ills its brings along quite forcefully.  The classical education forms the whole person, leading students to truth thus building them in faith, character and intellect.

Unlike standard academic programs of today, a “classical” school focuses on memorization, close study of primary-source “great books” and the liberal arts, rather than using conventional text books. The aim is that of Biblical narrative: The truth will set you free. The teacher’s goal is to prepare its pupils to receive that truth faithfully.

Psychologist Jean Twenge has coined the today’s generation of students as “iGen”, which is overpowered or engulfed with a ubiquitous access to smartphones with internet access causing harm to their emotional health and well-being of teens.

“The members of the iGen, born between 1995 and 2012, are far less religious, more morally neutral, more likely to question marriage, and less likely to get married than previous generations, according to Twenge’s data.  They are also likely to remain at home, living with their parents, longer than previous generations.”

This iGen needs an education with the coherence and logic offered by the classical curriculum.  Moreover, the iGen “needs a new set of stories” to help form them as adults capable of engaging in “functional and fruitful relationships.”

Fascinatingly, reading a book on St Peter Faber (1506-1546), a Savoyan Jesuit, I came across how the classical education was imparted in the Middle and later Middle Ages.  A short abstract is here and we can imagine the great catholic theologians, philosophers and saints were nurtured in such an environment! 

Here it goes the description:

"Daily life in all the colleges followed this pattern. Roused at 4 AM the students, carrying ink pots, candles, and notebooks, stumbled bleary-eyed to the first class at 5 AM, followed by Mass at 6 AM, after which the shivering youths broke their fast with a pieces of dry bread and some water.  The second class lasted from 8 AM until 10 AM followed by dialectical exercise for an hour.  Next there was a frugal dinner with a Latin text being read in the background, after which students were questioned about the matter dealt with in the morning.  Then, by way of relaxation, came the reading of Latin authors until the third class, which lasted from 3 PM until 5 PM; next came another disputation, followed by a wretched supper at 6 PM;  at 7 PM the students were again questioned, this time on the day’s studies, and at 8 PM in winter and 9 PM in summer, after a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, they were sent hungry to bed.

There were some compensations for the rigours of life and the unremitting study: pageants, masquerades, fairs, dances at the crossroads, sports on the Ile aux Vaches, and numerous fights in which students vented their pent-up frustrations and resentments." 

One of the famous colleges of the University of Sorbonne (Paris) is College de Montaigne founded in 1314, where the well known humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536) studied.  "He suffered so much there that by way of revenge he gave details of the trials he and others had to endure within its walls: scurvy, fleas, hard beds, and harder blows (all the masters carried canes and used them frequently and mercilessly), putrid herrings, rotten eggs and wine so sour that it tasted like vinegar.  There was still worse: some first-year students died of hardship and hunger, went blind or mad, or became infected with leprosy. Erasmus may well have exaggerated; but the evidence indicates that the students, many of them mere children, were underfed, overworked, and mercilessly bullied." (From the book, The Spiritual Writings of Pierre Favre, Pages 12-13)

Fascinatingly, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Peter Favre and St Francis Xavier and other first Jesuits studied in Sainte-Barbe college founded in 1450. The saints were students from 1525-1536 in Sorbonne University, Paris, France, the second university founded after the university of Padua, Italy.

Olvin Veigas
03 Oct 2018