of Learning_.
Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.
Whitcomb, M. _Source Book of the Italian Renaissance_.
* Walsh, Jas. J. _The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries_.




CHAPTER XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING


SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. It is often stated that the roots
of all our modern educational practices in secondary education lie buried
deep in the great Italian Revival of Learning. If we limit the statement
to the time preceding the middle of the nineteenth century we shall be
more nearly correct, as tremendous changes in both the character and the
purpose of secondary education have taken place since that time. The
important and outstanding educational result of the revival of ancient
learning by Italian scholars was that it laid a basis for a new type of
education below that of the university, destined in time to be much more
widely opened to promising youths than the old cathedral and monastic
schools had been. This new education, based on the great intellectual
inheritance recovered from the ancient world by a relatively small number
of Italian scholars, dominated the secondary-school training of the middle
and higher classes of society for the next four hundred years. It clearly
began by 1450, it clearly controlled secondary education until at least
after 1850. Out of the efforts of Italian scholars to resurrect,
reconstruct, understand, and utilize in education the fruits of their