Page 274 - Encyclopedia Of World History

624 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

This poster from the early
twentieth century is an appeal for
education for children in Syria.

observatories. As the empire expanded, it conquered
Spain in the early eighth century, and from the ninth to
the eleventh centuries made Spain the most powerful cen-
ter of culture and learning in the West, with its schools,
higher leaning institutes, and libraries. It was through
Saracen Spain that Europe acquired some of the elements
for the revival of learning. By the eleventh century, Islam
had firmly established itself throughout Central Asia and
India, where it established mosques, schools, and centers
of higher learning. But Islam was in decline as an intel-
lectual force by the time Europe began its revival.

The Italian Renaissance
The fifteenth century brought a reassertion of worldli-
ness, optimism, and a renewed faith in human potential
in Europe, and the process of rescuing the classics of
Greece and Rome accelerated and stimulated a surge in
painting, sculpture, and architecture.With this rejuvena-
tion of the fine arts, education and various kinds of train-
ing flourished as well. Humanism, a new orientation that
emphasized a different literary, philosophical, and his-
torical approach to studies, was at the heart of the move-
ment. By the early sixteenth century, courtly education for
the sons and daughters of the elite became prominent
throughout Europe. seventeenth-century English philosophers concerning
education. In Europe, Locke was a key figure in the
Continuity and Change European Enlightenment and represented the French
In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Portu- rationalist philosophers for whom education was central
gal and Spain were the chief colonizing powers and to their vision of a new, more rational social order.At the
began penetrating parts of South America, Africa, and end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth
Asia in their pursuit of territorial and economic ambi- centuries these ideas were translated into political action,
tions. The colonizers brought new educational activity, producing significant and sustained plans for basic edu-
with priests and friars quickly following the path of the cational reform. From this time forward, perceptions of
conquerors and setting out to educate and convert native the world and possible futures changed rapidly.
peoples. Although colonization did not peak until the
nineteenth century, European education had been intro- The Nineteenth Century
duced in many regions of the world by the seventeenth Many social, political, and economic movements pro-
century, following the routes established by the explorers foundly affected education in the nineteenth century.
of the previous two centuries. Among them were empire building, the growth of the
Enlightenment and Reform American reformers such nation-state, modernization, and the progressive move-
as Thomas Jefferson in the increasingly powerful Ameri- ment, all of which clearly show how the international
can colonies drew on and transformed the ideas of scope of education and universal literacy was explicitly