16.The Seven Liberal Arts: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

16.The Seven Liberal Arts: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

The Seven Liberal Arts 

    When Rome dissolved in the sixth century, Roman genius emerged as the Universal  Christian Church, an inspired religious sect grown spontaneously into a vehicle which  invested ultimate responsibility for personal salvation in the sovereign individual. The  Roman Church hit upon schooling as a useful adjunct,

and so what few schools could be  found after the fall of Rome were in ecclesiastical hands, remaining there for the next  eleven or twelve centuries. Promotion inside the Church began to depend on having first  received training of the Hellenic type. Thus a brotherhood of thoughtful men was created  from the demise of the Empire and from the necessity of intellectually defining the new  mission. 

      As the Church experimented with schooling, students met originally at the teacher's  house, but gradually some church space was dedicated for the purpose. Thanks to  competition among Church officials, each Bishop strove to offer a school and these, in  time to be called Cathedral schools, attracted attention and some important sponsorship,  each being a showcase of the Bishop's own educational taste.   

      When the Germanic tribes evacuated northern Europe, overrunning the south, cathedral  schools and monastic schools trained the invading leadership — a precedent of  disregarding local interests which has continued ever after. Cathedral schools were the  important educational institutions of the Middle Ages; from them derived all the schools  of western Europe, at least in principle. 

      In practice, however, few forms of later schooling would be the intense intellectual  centers these were. The Seven Liberal Arts made up the main curriculum: lower studies  were composed of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Grammar was an introduction to  literature, rhetoric an introduction to law and history, dialectic the path to philosophical  and metaphysical disputation. Higher studies included arithmetic, geometry, music, and  astronomy. Arithmetic was well beyond simple calculation, entering into descriptive and  analytical capacities of numbers and their prophetic use (which became modern  statistics); geometry embraced geography and surveying; music covered a broad course  in theory; astronomy prepared entry into physics and advanced mathematics. 

      Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, an attempt to reduce the influence of  emotionality in religion took command of church policy. Presenting the teachings of the  Church in scientific form became the main ecclesiastical purpose of school, a tendency  called scholasticism. This shift from emotion to intellect resulted in great skill in analysis,  in comparison and contrasts, in classifications and abstraction, as well as famous verbal  hairsplitting — like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Scholasticism  became the basis for future upper-class schooling.