RICHARD MULCASTER
(1531-1611)
He was an English schoolmaster, many of whose pedagogical theories were not generally
accepted until at least 250 years after his death. He was educated at Eton, Cambridge, and Oxford.
In 1561, he became the first headmaster of the Merchant-Taylor’s School, and, after teaching in
his own private schools, he became high master at St. Paul’s. Mulcaster’s fame rests mainly
upon his two books Positions Concerning the Training Up of Children (1581) and The First Part of
the Elementarie (1582). He recommended special university training for teachers, comparable to
that for doctors or lawyers, careful selections of teachers and adequate salaries, assignment of
the best teachers to the lowest grades, and close association between teachers and parents. He
emphasized the importance of individual differences in children, the adjustment of the
curriculum to these differences, and the use of readiness rather than age in determining
progress.
ST. JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE
(1651-1719)
He founded the Institute of the Brethren of Christian Schools (La Salle Schools) that aimed to
teach the poor and the underprivileged and introduced a practical teacher training program. He
was regarded as the patron saint of teachers.
The various educational reforms which de la Salle introduced prove that he legislated wisely.
The courses of study for elementary free schools, technical schools, and colleges are evidences of
his broad culture and wide grasp of educational problems. Hence, if the needs of a certain
locality called for special branches, or if the times and conditions demanded certain advanced
studies, de la Salle was not slow in responding nor in giving these subjects a place commensurate
in importance with their educational value. De la Salle, furthermore, displayed his genius in giving
is institute a distinctive character, that of a teaching body, consecrated to the work of popular
education. Thus, he became the author of a system of psychologic pedagogy that included the
essential principles adopted by later workers in the field of educational reforms, notably by
Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Herbart, and others. In making the vernacular the basis of all instruction, de la
Salle appealed to the intelligence of the child, prepared the way for the study of national
literature, and opened up to the grown man those avenues of real knowledge and delight that
had hitherto been closed against the eager multitude.
With true scientific insight he perceived the absurdity of retaining Latin texts to teach the art
of reading. For this change he gave the following reasons:
●The teaching of the art of reading, in primary and elementary schools, through the vernacular,
is of greater and wider utility than by Latin texts.
●The vernacular is more easily taught to children, who already possess some knowledge of it,
than the Latin of which they are wholly ignorant.
●It requires considerably less time to learn the of reading through the vernacular than through a
foreign tongue.
●The boys and girls attending the primary and elementary schools, can spend only a few years
under instruction. Now, if they are taught reading from a Latin text, they generally leave school
without being able to read the vernacular, and with only an imperfect knowledge of how to read
the Latin. Hence, they will soon forget the little they have learned, and, perhaps, even how to
read the vernacular.
●Reading is one of the most efficacious means of acquiring knowledge. With due care in the
selection of books, children who can read in the vernacular could spread the Christian doctrine in
the family circle, and, on evenings, read some useful or instructive books to the assembled
household; whereas, if they could read the Latin only, without understanding it, they would be
deprived of many valuable benefits resulting from the intelligent reading of a good book.
●It is impossible for children in primary and elementary to master the reading of Latin texts,
because they are not acquainted with its subject matter. It is, therefore, the part if wisdom to
train children thoroughly to the intelligent reading of works written in the vernacular. Thus,
having mastered the art of reading in the vernacular, a few moths would suffice to make them
read the Latin fluently, whereas, if the traditional method were followed, it would require at least
several years.
This fact proves that de la Salle was a profound thinker, a genius in the work of popular
education. He embraced all classes, all conditions of society. By making the free schools popular,
he grasped the growing needs of society in his own day and for all times. No phase of the
educational problem escaped his penetrating vision.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
(1801-1890)
A leader of the Oxford Movement and later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church, John
Henry Newman, outstanding religious thinker and essayist, was probably the most influential
theologian of Victorian England. Born on February 21, 1801, Newman was educated at Trinity
College, University of Oxford. Newman, whose own religious thinking had for some time been
along similar lines, soon became the acknowledged leader of the Oxford group, a role for which
his vital personality, fervent asceticism, and persuasive eloquence preeminently qualified him. He
was one of the chief contributors to the Tracts for the Times (1833-41), for which he wrote 29
papers, including the famous Tract 90, which terminated the series. That final tract provoked a
storm of opposition by its claim that the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, which
incorporate the creed of the Reformed Church in England, are aimed primarily at the abuses and
not the dogmas of Roman Catholicism.
Newman in 1864 published his masterpiece, Apologia pro Vita Sua (Apology for His Life), a
memorable account of his spiritual development that is an acknowledged classic of both religious
autobiography and English prose. Because of his disagreement with Cardinal Henry Manning over
the wisdom of promulgating the doctrine of papal infallibility – Newman did not oppose the
doctrine per se – he fell out of favor with the Vatican in 1870, a favor that was only restored in
1879, when, at the insistence of English Catholics, Leo XIII made him cardinal. He died on August
11, 1890.
In Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (1838) Newman attempted to find a via media
between justification by faith and by works. His emphasis on sanctification and his suspicion of a
merely imputed righteousness was marked by a return to an emphasis on the imparted
righteousness of the indwelling Christ. His Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)
attempts to distinguish between true and false doctrinal developments. He suggests a number of
tests including preservation of type or idea, continuity of principles, power of assimilation, early
anticipation, logical sequence, preservative additions, and chronic continuance. He attempts to
apply these tests to particular historical instances in the life of the church. In addition to these
tests he argues that for Christianity to be maintained through the flux of history, it must have an
infallible expounder. A living magisterium was necessary; and that was what Rome claimed to
possess. By such process of argument Newman became a Roman Catholic.
Newman's other important writings include An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870),
a closely reasoned defense of the rationality of religious belief. He expounds a theory of
cumulative arguments and the process of the "illative" sense of moral judgment to defend the
moral propriety and intellectual integrity of faith. It retrains one of the most important analyses
of religious belief.
His The Idea of a University is a landmark in writing on the nature of university education, in
which he defined the function of a university as the of the mind rather than the diffusion of
practical information, and treats in training particular the place of theology within such a
comprehensive framework. Newman also wrote the novels Loss and Gain (1848) and Callista
(1856); The Dream of Gerontius (1865), a monologue in verse; and Verses on Various Occasions
(1874).
The holiness of Newman's life and the importance of his influence have led to a movement
seeking to have him canonized. On January 22, 1991, Pope John Paul II, who greatly admires
Cardinal Newman, declared him "venerable."
HERBERT SPENCER
(1820-1903)
Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820, the son of William George
Spencer, an officious but respected educator. Coming from a family of teachers (including his
grandfather and uncle) he was encouraged to learn at an early age.
In 1855 Spencer wrote the Principles of Psychology, which explored a theory of the mind as
a biological counterpart of the body rather than as an estranged opposite. In this model human
intelligence was something that had slowly developed as a response to its physical environment.
Such an evolutionary standpoint on the origin of man alienated conservative publishers, once
again leaving Spencer to publish his work at his own expense.
In 1862 Spencer was able to publish First Principles, an exposition of his evolutionary theory
of the underlying principles of all domains of reality, which had acted as the foundational beliefs
of his previous works. His definition of evolution explained it as the ongoing process by which
matter is refined into an increasing complex and coherent form. This was the main canon of
Spencer’s philosophy, a developed and coherently structured explanation of social evolution
(that predated Darwin’s major works). By this time Spencer was achieving an international
reputation of great respect. His view on man’s place in nature were very influential and broadly
accepted.
In 1844, his work Man versus the State was published, outlining his political philosophy. In
1902, shortly before his death, he was nominated for the Noble Prize for Literature. He continued
to write throughout his life, often by dictation in his later years, until he succumbed to his poor
health at the age of 83.
He attempted to compile all knowledge in his “Synthetic Philosophy.” He also advocated
the theoretical concept, “survival of the fittest,” and defined education as complete living.
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” to describe changes in society.
London School of Economics Professor Rodney Barker writes:
Like Darwin, Spencer employed a selective principle to explain social evolution, but he
complemented natural selection with the Lamarckian notion of adaptation, and of the
inheritability of a predisposition to successful adaptation. His familiar phrase, “the survival of
the fittest”, can thus be misleading, in so far as it suggests an arbitrary process depending on the
absence of presence of qualities over which the individual or society has no control. The fittest
were those who adapted, and there was in principle no limit to the number who might make this
accommodation. The struggle for the survival was thus not of man against man, but of man
against a changing environment.