The History of Pedagogy

In 1885, Gabriel Compayré undertook an ambitious task: tracing how humanity learned to teach, from the wrestling grounds of ancient Greece to the state schools of modern France. What emerged was more than a chronicle. It was an argument that understanding where education came from is essential to improving where it's going. Compayré moves through the ancient world, the early Church, the medieval monastery schools, the Renaissance recovery of classical learning, and the explosive reforms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He examines the Jesuits and their disciplined approach, the Jansenists and their rigor, the Protestant insistence on universal literacy, and the long struggle to educate women. Then comes Rousseau, whose revolutionary ideas about learning from nature upended everything, followed by the French Revolution's tearing of education from the Church's hands and its remaking as a state enterprise. The book demonstrates that the debates we have today about who should learn what, and by what method, have deep historical roots. This is for anyone who teaches, or who has ever wondered why we do education the way we do.