Perspectives of Relations between School and Parents from the Middle Ages to the Reformation

Author analyses some perspectives and interpretations of relations between school and parents in the past. He points out how they were developing in the Middle Ages and in the time of Reformation. In that time cooperation of parents and a school was understood essentially different as today. In the Middle Ages the relation between parents and a school was clear and mostly non-problematic, at least regarding the contents, methods and objectives of education. Relations inside the school were an image of relations inside the family. In the time of Reformation status was not essentially different, still educators as Johannes Sturm began more intensively to think about meaning of cooperation between a school and a family.


Introduction
Defining and interpreting historical relations based on known facts and evidence is not always easy task.Contemporary testimonies are often biased, or at least very one-sided.By combining evidence and the interpretation of information, we attempt to create a distinct and clear image of a historical event or development; however, the image created is largely a product of our own perception of specific problems.Historical studies and comparative analyses made in the present on behalf of the past are significantly influenced by the author's attitudes or points of view.An interpretation of a certain fact depends on a standard for "measuring" history.We too often take our present time (status of tech-ISSN 1392-0340 E-ISSN 2029-0551 Pedagogika / 2015, t. 120, Nr. 4 nological development, current culture or mindset, etc.) as the standard of validity and optimality and then apply this standard to the past in order to evaluate developments, or perceived lack thereof, in a specific historical period.This is especially dangerous when an author attempts to use historical research to justify and defend their own time period and achievements in specific areas of culture, science or technology.When research is done in this way, the result is basically known in advance; we can only discuss the details.
Another possibility in the historical research, which I believe is much more effective, valid and productive, is to consider -or at least try to consider -the analysed time and its status of development within specific fields, that is, to make some sort of hermeneutic analysis of the period being considered.In this case, we must consider specific beliefs and mental structures of the people of the analysed period, which essentially differs in many ways from our own.Thus, we should not make the present the standard by which we measure the past, because this will let to skewed results.In such cases the past is, at best, grey throughout.In both interpretational paradigms, an appropriate methodology of researching historical sources should be considered.
One of the fields where in the process of research many possibilities for different interpretations occur is that of education, particularly with respect to schools.Here particular caution is required.If we accept Althusser's thesis that an important task of the school is to reproduce production conditions or existent social relations (Althusser, 2000), we will end up with interpretations of historical events that are based on a priori apologetic or rejecting views.Such views involve simplified interpretations of both past and present events: all things are taken as being either good or bad.Rather than encouraging such simplified interpretations, the most important task for the researcher of the history of education is to search for arguments and interpretations that, as far as possible, consider material sources, social backgrounds, contexts, and mental structures of the period being analysed, in order to take into account the full complexity of the problem being considered.
In the article we will analyse and discuss the perspectives and relations between schools, teachers and families during the Middle Ages and the Reformation.We would like to propose that, at least in these two historical periods, educational methods in the school imitated the education or educational methods that families used at home.Different issues and problems of the relations between school (i.e.teachers) and home (i.e.parents), first began to be identified and thematised during the Reformation and then increasingly grew in next centuries.

The school and the pupil
We can distinguish several different understandings and forms of the school.However, we can also define its minimal common denominator: a school is an institution that has been differentiated from everyday life for the purpose of learning, i.e. for the purpose of thematically connected, pedagogically and professionally organized, individual or collective learning (Tenorth, 2000, 429).The best-known model is the compulsory, state-controlled public school.One of the reasons for the enforcement of compulsory education, in particular since the nineteenth century, has been a wish to reduce or abolish the educational dominion of the family; unfortunately, as a result, school has become an issue of political interest and conflicts (ibid., 432).
In the past two decades, there has been an evident shift from a compensational role of schools to a complementary position and from a cliental role of parents towards efforts to achieve a more correct partnership between schools and parents (Resman, 1992b, 136;Šteh and Kalin, 2011).The younger the pupils are, the more important it is for there to be cooperation between parents and their schools (Resman, 1992b, 137).Likewise, some questions connected with the relationship between school and home have emerged recently that did not draw any attention in the past.These include the following questions: What is the meaning and purpose of cooperation?What can be expected from cooperation?What should the relationship between home and school be?Which type of cooperation with parents will school politics stimulate?What is the starting-point of cooperation with parents, and what are their expectations?, etc. (Resman, 1992a, 31).Successful cooperation also requires the educational institution to permanently conduct self-evaluation activities, since these can be understood as a necessary precondition for effective quality improvement (Podgornik and Mažgon, 2015).
Another key factor is the child, or pupil.The relationship between school and parents depends on the relationship between school and child.However, it is difficult to define the term "child," because a conception of childhood as a specific developmental phase that deserves particular attention is historically quite late, not becoming widely accepted before the seventeenth or eighteenth century (Lenzen, 2000, 342).Above all, the conception of "child" is, as Lenzen states, used primarily as a way to delimit the notion of "adult": "To define, what the child is, there is something to be constructed, the child, the adult, the human.The results are the constructs."(ibid., 343) The term "child" is a construct that is impossible to define empirically, as there are no scientific research methods that would undoubtedly confirm what the child is and what the child is not (ibid., 343).
Some authors claim that a child did not "become a child" prior to the beginning of the industrial era (Berg, 1961;Laslett, 1971) and that Rousseau was the first one to write about the process of becoming an adult (Arnold, 1980, 11-12).The well-known thesis of Ariès (1991) about the indifference toward children before the beginning of the modern era intensified Shorter (1975) and deMause (1998).In 1975, Shorter asserted that maternal love is the product of modernity and that it as a matter of fact did not exist before 1850 (Shorter, 1975).The American theorist, deMause, defended an even more extreme position.He wrote that "the history of childhood has been a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken.The further back in history one goes -and the further away from the West one gets -the more massive the neglect and cruelty one finds and the more likely children are to have been killed, rejected, beaten, terrorized and sexually abused by their caretakers" (DeMause, 1998).He developed a theory of six stages, or "childrearing modes" in the development of relations between parents and their children.The six stages are as follows: 1) infanticidal, 2) abandoning, 3) ambivalent, 4) intrusive, 5) socializing, and 6) the helping mode.According to deMause, these reached their optimal mode in the present (ibid.).However, it seems deMause's thesis overlooks hostility toward children in modern societies and child abuse in modern-day developed countries.
In order to justify his thesis that parents were indifferent towards their children during the Middle Ages, Ariès methodically proceeds from descriptions and understanding of the contents of paintings of that time.On that basis, he states that in the Middle Ages "childhood" did not exist as a time of life formally set off from adulthood (Ariès, 1991).According to him, children were not treated differently from adults; they played and moved among them, and consequently, they had many opportunities to acquire experiences needed for their future lives.Ariès was also convinced that families functioned predominantly as production communities and were thus far less connected by emotional ties than are families in modern society.Thus, it was not till the beginning of the Modern Era that childhood was "discovered" and it was recognized that "being a child" is an independent phase in human life (ibid.).Since then, children have had their own status connected with their age, and parent-child relationships have begun to take on more pleasant forms.According to Ariès, nowadays, children are much more protected; however, they are pushed into a kind of protective ghettoization, i.e. the school, which has no connection with real life and within which they are under permanent control.Instead of independent decision-making, constraint and lack of liberty are growing (ibid.).Ariès felt that this was akin to locking up children in a manner similar to the way in which some modern societies have locked up the insane, the poor, and prostitutes (ibid.; cf. also Engelbrecht, 1982).
The above definitions and assessments of the status of the child during the preindustrial era are reflected in the following statement: "Close connection of children with daily procedures, close contact with the surrounding countryside and with the animals, created a sort of position, which can be, only regarding extreme cautiousness, compared to later entirely different positions of life of the children, according to their social, economic and cultural structure.There is a very big danger to set modern standards of social and mental care of the children as 'natural,' culturally and temporally unmarked, and that we measure previous family relations according to them" (Sieder, 1998, 35).

Children and education in the Middle Ages
It appears that medieval authors were ambivalent when it came to the subject of children; some writers indicate an open revulsion towards children, while others demonstrate kindness and affection.At the same time, there was a recognized need for childcare and some understanding of the special needs of children, and boys and girls used different toys and games (Engelbrecht, 1982, 19).It would be hard and demagogically to say, that children in the Middle Ages were unloved, because there are many sources from the time that show evidence to the contrary (Arnold, 1980, 82).According to Arnold, love for children was not particularly schematized, because it was considered to be something obvious and self-evident (ibid., 82).High birth and death rates were characteristic of this period; therefore, the understanding of life and death was rather different from our own.Nonetheless, the high death rate of the time is not a sufficient reason to claim that in the Middle Ages love and affection towards children did not exist; it just suggests that understanding and perception of life and death were far different (Jaritz, 1986).
The age of seven was considered to be the end of childhood (infantia) and the time when boyhood (pueritia) began (Arnold, 1996, 140;Engelbrecht, 1982, 17).At the age of seven, education outside the family commenced, either in a school or under the tutelage of a private teacher or -and this mode was the prevailing one in provincial medieval society -the child was directly integrated into the world of work (ibid., p. 20).Children living in the countryside were involved in work from their earliest years.They were born into the village family structure and progressively watched and learned procedures that would come to mark their everyday life (Sieder, 1998, 5).Child labor during the industrial era had a precursor in the agrarian world of the Middle Ages, with the difference that in the Middle Ages children were not exploited as in the early industrial phase of capitalism.The focus was rather on early integration into the world of adult work.Even today, we can observe some examples of this in traditional societies, as Margaret Mead demonstrated with respect to the people of Polynesia: "From the time they are four or five years old they perform definite tasks, graded to their strength and intelligence, but still tasks which have a meaning in the structure of the whole society" (Mead, 1928, 226).At this age, a child would begin his apprenticeship in trade or craft.The significance and role of medieval children can be summed up as follows: "During the centuries of the Middle Ages and of the Early Modern times a child has its firm position in a society; he was simply there.In the family, at home, on the streets and markets, everywhere children were present.They were beloved and from a side of their parents and neighborhood sometimes perceived as burdening, as at all times; lights and shadows accompanied their existence as they do even today" (Arnold, 1980, 86).
We must not assign any special significance to what might seem like examples of rejection of school attendance in the Middle Ages, as schooling was more or less limited to a small group of children, especially to children of the nobility and -since the development of towns -of the townspeople.Schooling was possible for these two social classes because of their financial capabilities, and education was considered relevant for future careers (Jaritz, 1986, 169).
We can establish that in the Middle Ages relations between teachers and pupils were a sort of imitation of relations at home (between parents and their children), at least with regards to educational means and objectives (Vidmar, 2009).In addition, relations between parents and schools were clear and mostly unproblematic, at least in terms of contents, methods and objectives of education.Occasionally, there were complaints regarding the quality of education or the level of knowledge, but the greatest difficulties in parent-teacher relationships seem to have been economic in nature, related to the paying of school fees and the like (ibid.).
Pedagogical theorists and practitioners searched for justification of their educational practices in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.The most important "guides" or "principles" of education were said to be found in the Book of Sirach.These "principles" were applied equally at home and in the schools (Arnold, 1980).I will mention only some of the most important: "He who loves his son will whip him often, so that he may rejoice at the way he turns out."(Sir 30:1) "An unbroken horse turns out stubborn, and an unchecked son turns out headstrong." (Sir 30:8) "Bow down his [sons] neck in his youth, and beat his sides while he is young, or else he will become stubborn and disobey you, and you will have sorrow of soul from him."(Sir 30: 12) "Discipline your son and make his yoke heavy, so that you may not be offended by his shamelessness."(Sir 30: 13) In Hebrew, a word denoting "education", meant "punishment" as well (Marrou, 1965, 241).An argument for the importance education was made based on the following verse: "He who teaches his son will make his enemies envious, and will glory in him among his friends."(Sir 30: 3) In selecting means and methods of education, neither Medieval nor Reformation-era educators refer to the New Testament, which lacks explicit instructions regarding the education of children.
Education with the "help" of a stick (as an instrument for discipline and as motivation to memorize more quickly) was unavoidable for all students, whether poor or rich, at home or at school.Medieval illustrations tend to depict teachers holding a stick in one hand (Vidmar, 2009).On the other hand, some educators held that reproof was much more useful than capital punishment, which they claimed leads to obtuseness (Arnold, 1980, 81).
As an illustration of the relationship between parents and schools and between schools and students, I would like to look at two examples from the Early Middle Ages that are illustrative of the entire period.During the first centuries of Christianity, there were many problems associated with the joining of Christianity and pagan Graeco-Roman culture, when even so-called Church Fathers stood on the opposite sides (e.g.Tertullian vs. Hieronymus and Augustine).One of the major problems occurred in the endeavour to accept a system of classical Graeco-Roman education without accepting the pagan culture upon which this system was founded (Marrou, 1965, 456-462).One of the most fervent opponents of the ancient pagan school was Tertullian, who in his works analyzed its "idolatrous and immoral" character (Tertullianus, 1844).Tertullian strictly forbade Christians to work as teachers in Roman public schools, because he was convinced that this occupation was comparable to the craft of the idol-makers and astrologers, two occupations that are entirely incompatible with the Christian faith.At the same time, Tertullian recognized the need for Christian children to attend the same, pagan schools, which were forbidden to the teacher (ibid.).He realized that it would be absurd for Christianity to reject secular literature and studies, since without these religious studies would be impossible.This problem had not been solved far into the Middle Ages.
In 680 CE, the third ecumenical council of Constantinople decreed the following: "Priests in the estates and villages should maintain schools.Moreover, if any of the faithful wishes to entrust his children to him for teaching letters, they should not reject to accept them and to teach them, but they ought to teach them with as much fondness (caritate) as possible.<…> When they teach them, they should not demand from them anything nor should they accept anything from them, except what would parents offer them voluntarily for their effort and affection" (Mansi, 1728(Mansi, , 1007)).
In rural areas, children's transition into the world of adulthood was almost seamless.Girls were under the control of their mothers, and boys were under the control of their fathers.Domestic education followed gender.Young people were understood primarily as a work force and accordingly (educational) demands were formed.As a result, there was no need to develop special techniques or institutions of education or socialization; instead of training the young people in formal schools, all needed knowledge could be transmitted within families and village communities.If a family did not have enough ability to feed and clothe later-born children, the younger children would have to work outside their own homes (Arnold, 1996, 145).
Meanwhile, children of the aristocracy participated in courtly or chivalric education, which included military training and musical-aesthetic education.A primary objective for the boys was to become a knight, while the educational objectives for girls did not differ from the objectives for girls in other social classes (i.e.preparation for the role of wife, mother and mistress of the house).
Occupations in crafts and commerce dominated the towns.Here vocational education was organized within the framework of guilds.There were three levels: 1) apprentice, 2) assistant and 3) master.This system had some characteristics that made it different from typical education of the time.For the apprentice and the assistant, the master's family became a canter of their life and the primary means of their education and socialization.The master also acted as a father, while the apprentice had to subject himself entirely to the master's discipline (Endres, 1996).In order to be admitted to an apprenticeship, the candidate had to be a certain age; the specific age varied from craft to craft.Formal schooling was not a prerequisite; knowledge of reading and writing sufficed, and sometimes even this was unnecessary.Guilds provided "learning contracts", where the rights and obligations of all participants were precisely defined.The learning contract was made between a master and either his apprentice or the apprentice's father, who acted as the apprentice's representative.On the basis of a learning contract, the apprentice came into the master's household, where he was supposed to conduct himself properly and decently and to be diligent and industrious in his work.However, the apprentice also had a right to proper care and shelter, to be punished or disciplined only moderately, to be taught in the art of the craft, and not to be chased away, or dismissed, without just cause.At work and in his free time the apprentice was subject to the rules of the master's family (Arnold, 1996;Endres, 1996).

Educational developments during the Reformation
During the Reformation, Martin Luther set up starting points and guidelines for education and for the relationships between authorities and schools and between schools and parents or families.According to Martin Luther, three social institutions should be engaged in education (Vidmar, 2005).These are families, schools and the Church.Luther held that without a good family-based education, no other education, whether in the schools or the church, can be effective.Parents must be responsible to provide for the education of their children.The school, on the other hand, has an integrative function beside an educative one.It helps the child to integrate himself effectively into the existent social order, where he could become a true human being.Last but not least, Luther held that the Church ought to cooperate with the state to provide for the organization and inspection of schools.
According to Luther, it is a grave sin for parents not to make any effort to educate their children and not to educate them well (Luther, 1975b).However, even this was for him not sufficient.Children should be sent to school as well.In a 1519 sermon entitled "A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage" (Ein Sermon vom ehelichen Stand), Luther claims that one of the most important tasks and benefits that belongs to families is the education of children; he says this cannot be compared to a pilgrimage to holy places, to subscribing to a charity, etc. (ibid., 12-13).In Luther's opinion, one of the worst things one can do is to neglect the education of a child, allowing the child to curse or swear, or teaching him scandalous words and songs and allowing him to live however he wants (ibid., 12-13).False natural love frequently blinds parents, who take more care of the bodies of their children than of their souls.Luther insists that the Old Testament "guidelines" for education should be followed (ibid., 13-14).Other Protestant theorists and practitioners of education later followed his understanding of education, and it had a strong influence on the development of pedagogical theories and formal schooling.
In 1524, Luther wrote an open (circular) letter to the town councillors in Germany about the need for organizing and maintaining schools (An die Ratsherrn aller Städte deutsches Lands, daß sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen) (Luther, 1975a).He says that no one understands how pernicious it would be if the schools were allowed to fall into decay.However, what would be even worse is if the damage had been already been done and no one had noticed it when they could still have done something to prevent it.According to Luther, the citizens were afraid of the Turks and of war and floods, because they understand the nature of those dangers, but nobody feared what the devil had in mind for the schools, because nobody saw it.Luther tells the town councillors that if they spend money for roads, dams, and the defence of their towns every year they should spend at least as much for the maintenance of one or two capable teachers, who could educate poor youth.Luther is convinced that education should be the duty of parents; however, parents should also be subject to the authorities.He writes that unfortunately most parents are incapable, unskilled and do not know how to educate and teach their children.Even if the parents were skilled and if they wanted to educate their children themselves, they could not do so, because they lack the time and the place to do so, because of their other work and duties.For this reason, it is necessary that parents engage modest educator (Zuchtmeister).Each child should have his or her own educator; however, ordinary people cannot afford to hire private teachers, and therefore, because of poverty, many good children remain deprived of a good education.Excellent schools -for boys and for girls -should be established everywhere, because the world needs educated and skilled men to rule the land and women to appropriately manage and maintain their houses, children and servants.
Luther responded to the objection that people wish to educate their own children by saying that there is a good chance that the product of such an education would be a dolt.If, on the other hand, parents sent their children to a school staffed by educated and modest teachers, children would acquire knowledge of the world in a very short time.With this type of education, they would be able to form their own views, and in time, they would know how to act rightly.According to Luther, education at home makes us wise through experience, but experience takes so much time to gain that by the time we learned from it, we would be dead a hundred times over.Luther does not advocate for schooling that would last twenty or thirty years and would not produce instant results.Rather, he says boys and girls should be sent to school for an hour or two a day.The more talented boys and those who are intended to become teachers or clergymen should continue with their schooling for a longer period of time (resumed after Luther, 1975a).
Reformation-era educators did not essentially differ from their medieval predecessors regarding the methods of education and the means of discipline.Both advocated physical punishment; however, Reformation educators differed with regard to the intensity and frequency of disciplinary action that they recommended (Vidmar, 2005).
It might seem that Reformation thinkers were not much concerned with questions of the relations between home and school or teachers and parents.However, during the Reformation educators began to think about the cooperation between school and home, teachers and family (ibid.).We can see this even in the changing paradigms of schoolstate relations.During this time, the process of taking over schools and education by the state began.
In his 1593 work, "On the correct opening of the schools" (De litterarum ludis recte aperiendis), Johannes Sturm, the "father" of the gymnasium and of the Protestant educational ideal, presented his understanding of the tasks and duties of parents (Sturm, 1860, 655-657).He claimed that parental care should be joined to and work in accordance with the guidance and advice of teachers.Fathers should commend, stimulate and cherish their children, but they should also warn, reprehend and punish them.In principle, children should not be punished with physical punishments, because this is not appropriate.Parents should not impose on their children, who attend school, physical labors and employments; these might be good for the body, but they fatigue the spirit and render it incapable of thought.When a father acts as teacher, he should encourage his children's love and affection for knowledge (amorem erga litteras) and help them to be diligent, and he should not disturb or hinder them by requiring them to perform domestic duties.Meanwhile, children should respect their teachers, and in their speech and behavior, they should say and do nothing that is unethical or that might discredit their studies (ibid.).Finally, both parents should take an interest in what their children learn at school, even if they are unlearned themselves.According to Sturm, in this way even an uneducated parent can accustom his or her child to a discipline (ibid.).Sturm's understanding, in turn, served as a guideline for Protestant views on education.
School regulations, proclaimed in Protestant lands during the sixteenth century, were intended to establish schools that were organized and administrated by the state.At the level of secondary education, this goal was generally realized; however, reforms were less successful at the elementary level, in the so-called people's school.This was because one of the essential conditions for the realization of these good intentions was missing, namely, teachers.Very few of the sacristans in charge of the teachers knew what should be taught, and elementary teachers did not receive very much in the way of economic and social benefits.Therefore, this job was often taken by "failed" students or even by craftsmen from other professions (Sieder, 1998;Vidmar, 2005;Ziegler 1923).To attend a school depended in the time of Reformation of a good will of parents, because compulsory education was not yet known.After its introducing however, some people were hostile to the idea of compulsory education, particularly those parents who needed their children to work (Sieder, 1998;Vidmar, 2005;Ziegler, 1923).
Even in the early nineteenth century, scholastic relationships were primarily seen as mirroring familial relationships.Teachers still had some sort of a mandate of the parents (their rights and duties), but deliberations connected to relations of a school towards parents began to gain more and more importance.Even political and school authorities explicitly emphasized this in school legislations.In the so-called "Political School Constitution" (an Austrian educational law from 1804), we can read the following: "Teacher should have equal distance towards gentleness and hardness, he should be as loving and understanding father.He should not condone children at their faults, but he should make big difference between the faults of juvenile carelessness and the faults of malice.He has not any need for severe chastisement as long gentleness allows a change for the better.At rewarding and chastising he needs to be wise and just, without partiality" (Politische Verfassung…, 1828, §242).
The relationship between teachers and parents was defined as follows: "Teacher should receive parents of his pupils politely and kindly.If he needs something to tell them to encourage them to a more strict control and cooperation because of the offences of their children, he should talk to them calm and sympathetic, without bitter reproaches.In such cases, he should not send messages or instructions to them by pupils or strange persons, since misunderstandings and conflicts could easily develop" (ibid., §247).

Conclusion
As previously noted, many historical practices that we may be prone to criticize when considered through the lens of modern standards of culture and technology, show themselves in a rather different light when considered within their own historical and cultural contexts.Therefore, we should not evaluate the past by means or modern criteria, and we should avoid general and simplified interpretations when engaging in historical analysis.Instead, when considering a historical topic, we should take into account how that topic was perceived and interpreted in its own time.It would be not correct to evaluate specific historical conditions with modern criterions that would simply be transferred to the past.Something like this would be absurd, since education, school and other human social activities in general are particularly sensitive for such methods of evaluation.
Having considered the relevant primary sources within their historical context as well as relevant secondary sources, it is clear that the educational methods used during the Middle Ages and Reformation mirrored the educational methods used within familial settings.Teachers and masters assumed fatherly roles.For that reason, the relationships between parents and teachers were mostly unproblematic, at least in terms of the educational role of the school and its function with respect to the ideological apparatus of the state, once state school systems were established during the Reformation.In many places parents did not like teachers, because schooling was connected with financial expenditure; however, teachers generally had the support of parents with respect to questions of discipline, educational objectives and the transfer of knowledge.During the Middle Ages, cooperation between school authorities and parents was not understood as it is today.However, during the Reformation, theorists began to think seriously about the kind of cooperation needed between teachers, schools and parents, and they identified such cooperation as one of the conditions for a successful educational system.Throughout both periods, problems in the relations between schools and parents occurred mainly with regard to financial questions.At the same time, relations between schools and parents might have been aggravated, if Luther's demand for compulsory education had been realized.This issue became evident in the eighteenth century when compulsory education was enforced.However, even then, the problems in parent-school relations were still seen primarily as financial rather than as pedagogical in nature.