Question 4

What were the chief characteristics of early Renaissance "Humanist education"?

Italian "Humanism," and later Northern Humanism, were essentially educational movements.  Teachers and students discovered lost manuscripts, established schools, founded an ideal (or a mythology) of the complete "eloquent" person, knowledgeable, wise, supremely trained in discourse, courageous ready to act in civic affairs. In the North, education also took on an urgent moral and religious imperative to provide educated teachers, preachers, and leaders for the Reformation

Many early Humanists were actors in civic affairs; but their students far exceeded in number those able to take a major role in politics or law.  Humanist education tended to perpetuate itself (as all institutions) in its professed ideal; individual "stars" helped the schools and the myth to grow.

Guarino Guarini (1374-1460) of Ferrara--best known Humanist school in Italy.  A salesman as well as learned scholar (Greek studied in Constantinople) he translated Plutarch and Isocrates into Latin.  His persona modeled somewhat on Isocrates; his school definitely on I's institution

What was image and reality of Humanist education in Italy?

Image--Classical educatio for the new social environment

quote p. 2 of Grafton and Jardine 

Ciceronian model of eloquence; Quintilian model of training; Greek political ideal of the active life in which moral virtue is expressed in right speaking and acting

Reality---Incredibly exhaustive regimen of study--first elementals of grammar, then Latin language, then literature and moral philosophy based on the Ciceronian text and ideal; full rhetorical panoply.

Quote pp. 10-11

memorization, rote repetition, years of dry and detailed study.

result?  Some were able to attain the ideal; most seem only to have reached partial success; many lost, confused

Frequent result--highly literate docility; useful to autocratic courts and in other official spheres. 

Grafton thesis: the elite/privileged culture nodded to the Humanist ideal but was really interested in the literate docility of the majority; education was really an endorsement of the rigidifying (in 16 cen) status quo of autocracy.  Thus the liberatory pedagogy really ensured that no revolution would take place.  Sound familiar????

Educational texts:

Since Humanism was really interested in education, most popular texts in rhetoric (core discipline) were not theoretical a la Aristotle (Aristotelian treatises rare and often neglected) but practical a la Quintilian.  Also, "elementary nature of most rhetorical studies in the Ren. contributed to the failure of Aristotle's Rhetoric to become a major influence." (K, 204)