Essay - Schooling in Renaissance Italy Book Review: Grendler, Paul F. Schooling...

schooling in Renaissance Italy

Book Review: Grendler, Paul F. School*****g in Renaissance *****: Literacy and Learning 1300-1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Let those men teach boys who can do nothing greater." The first quotation from the Italian author Petrarch in Paul F. Grendler's Schooling in Renaissance Italy: ***** and Learning 1300-1600, is perhaps most humorous to a modern reader's eyes and ears, because it sounds dangerously like ***** phrase 'those who ********** do, teach,' a very common and often repeated cliche today. However, this ***** also highlights the profound shift in the way that education was viewed, and would be viewed, over ***** course of the next three hundred y***** of Italian histor*****. Increasingly, education *****came valued by members of the Italian el*****e and by ***** society as a whole. Education came to be prized as a commodity and an example of refine*****t *****d t*****te, when exhibited by one's self and one's children ***** the wealthier elements ***** society. (3) Education ***** ********** more valued in a practical fashion, as by the end of the era vernacular schools were set up to educate students, not ***** Latin, rhetoric, or theology, but in the language of the people and *****struments of trade.

With ***** ***** in attitude towards education came a corresponding shift in the way ***** teachers were viewed. No longer a despised profession for those of a "plodding" mentality, eventually educators would become esteemed and noteworthy as historical 'celebrities,' ***** chronicled by Grendler later in his text. (125) For example, the ***** Guarino ***** Vittorino introduced ***** phenomenon of the "boarding school," modeled upon the Latin and Greek systems of education, an institution that still has popular currency amongst members of ***** British and American 'ruling class' *****.

Despite its numerical subtitle, Schooling in ***** Italy: Lit*****cy and ***** 1*****00-1600 chronicles the shift in educational philosophy that characterized the Renaissance, not in a purely chronological fashion, but by sectioning the text along the lines ***** several broad, historical overviews. ***** first begins with an ideological contrast between medieval forms of education and Renaissance ***** methodology. He *****s to a ***** geogr*****phical perspective, dividing his work between two major city-states of Italy. This reflects ***** divided, sectional nature of ***** at the time, where each city-state had its own unique character. ***** instance, ***** Venetian ***** of the high *****, of ***** 1500s, ***** quite different than the Florentine Schools of he Early Renaissance and ***** later Roman vernacular schools. (42)

One of the ***** ***** facets of ***** Venetian view ***** ***** was the introduction of communal schools, founded by governments and parents whom believed education benefited the community. This ***** a shift from the idea ***** education should remain in the hands of a few, or th*****t only priests needed to be educated. As early as 1551, sestiere schools were created ***** the city. These institutions, f***** a time, offered a free education, usually to aristocratic girls, whose parents could ***** afford to educate them independently