Education in medieval times

In medieval times education had been almost exclusively the privilege of the Church, but due to the influence of Humanism and the new scientific and geographical discoveries a new wave of interest was aroused in the question of the best education for children.

The grammar schools which once were established as teaching institutions were attached to monasteries or cathedrals. Sometimes, especially after the Reformation and dissolution of monasteries, they were founded by groups of merchants. The curriculum included Latin, Greek, ancient history, religion, and, increasingly, English. Typically, all the 50 or so students in a school were taught together in the same class by the same teacher. Discipline was strict. The school day started at six in the morning and ended at about six in the evening, when it was light enough to study. The students were the sons of the local middle class: merchants, farmers, lawyers and shopkeepers.

There also existed 'dame' schools which gave an extremely elementary education: the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. They were usually run by an old lady in the village.

Girls were not normally sent to school, since the only education considered appropriate to them was to learn how to run the home, to sew, to embroider and perhaps to play a musical instrument. These skills were best learnt in the service of some rich man. A few enlightened families (such as that of Sir Thomas More) had private tutors to provide for the formal education of their daughters.

After Brodey K., Malgaretti F.

The rise of prescriptivism

The uncertainties of the 16th and 17th century about the suitability of English as a language of science and learning led to quite massive borrowing from classical languages. It also engendered a frame of mind where people thought English was deficient and this in its turn gave rise to many musings in print about just what constitutes correct English. With this one has the birth of the prescriptive tradition which has lasted to this very day. Much of this was well-meaning: scholars of the time misunderstood the nature of language variation and sought to bring order into what they saw as chaos. Frequently this merged with the view that regional varieties of English were only deserving of contempt, a view found with many eminent writers such as Jonathan Swift who was quite conservative in his linguistic opinions. The basic difficulty which the present-day linguist sees in the prescriptive recommendations of such authors is that they are entirely arbitrary. There is no justification for the likes and dislikes of prescriptive authors. These writers are self-appointed guardians and defenders of what they regard as good style. They established a tradition which was to have considerable influence in English society and was continued in a remorseless fashion by such authors as Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) who saw it as their mission in life to wage war on what they regarded as signs of decay and decline in the English language.