Influences
The influences at work in the tractate are an interesting blend of Renaissance humanism with its emphasis on the via activa, tempered by the more contemplative medieval concern with personal redemption. It is clear, however, that the overwhelming thrust of Milton’s educational programme as outlined in the tractate is centred in the public objective. This is likely a reaction to the scholasticism that dominated the medieval university from the twelfth century, which still held sway in Milton’s time (Ainsworth 25).
Important individual influences on Milton’s tractate include Spanish educator Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) and Moravian educator John Comenius (1592-1670). Both Vives and Comenius rejected the dialectical approach in education in favour of empirical observation and “the study of things rather than words, nature rather than books” (Lewalski 204). In an interesting fusion of empiricism and morality, both educators promoted the idea that the study of nature was instrumental to the formation of moral character (Viswanathan 352).
Read more about this topic: Of Education
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)