Of Education by John Milton | Summary, Analysis, Context

 Of Education by John Milton | Summary, Analysis, Context

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Of Education was a reformative tract written by John Milton in the year 1644. Milton published it as a single eight [age quarto sheet without a publishing date and name of the author. However, it was reprinted and added in John Milton’s collective work titled ‘Poems, etc. upon several Occasions With a small tractate “Of Education — to Mr. Hartlib” in the year 1673.

Of Education offers the views of John Milton about the contemporary education system of England and how it should be changed for improvement. In his own words, this tract represents John Milton’s clearest views “concerning the best and noblest way of education.”

According to Milton, education serves both social and spiritual or moral purposes. On one hand, education helps “fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” on the other hand, education also serves the purpose to “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of true virtue”

In this essay, Milton is not gender-neutral and he is explicitly suggesting that he is not much concerned with the education of girls as they could not be “brave men and worthy patriots.”

Milton maintained this view throughout his life and even in Paradise Lost, he represented Eve as a submissive, inferior companion of Adam who is a little farther to God than Adam and hence, is lower in the hierarchy. Also, whenever Raphael, Michael, or other Archangels visited Paradise to consult, instruct, or teach Adam, Eve willfully remained absent from the conversation as she preferred to gain all required knowledge from and through Adam (that is, the male companion, or the husband, is the teacher of wife). This Miltonian idea was against his contemporaries such as Moravian educator John Comenius who suggested a pleasurable method of education applicable to and intended for all — boys and girls, the able and the dull, all social ranks.” Even Simon Hartlib and his circle of trusted advisors believed that girls should have equal opportunities for education.

Like John Amos Comenius, Milton proposed a natural method of learning classical languages including Greek and Latin, and devoting much lesser time to learning Grammar. He believes that it would be better for students if they devote more time to reading, learning, and experiencing classical literature during their early years, rather than wasting their time in parroting grammatical rules and regulations that one can understand and learn by themselves while learning literature. According to Hartlib, Comenius, and Milton, the current system of education which was in continuation with the medieval education system and stressed more on the grammar of Latin and Greek rather than books, was a waste of time. Milton stressed that historical and literary study as “steadfast pillars of the State” and believed that the object of education was to make good citizens of the state. Thus students should devote more time in learning historical and literary books instead of wasting their time learning grammar.

Milton got his school education from St. Paul’s School founded by Erasmus and Thomas More and he had their influence on him. Furthermore, he practically applied his ideas of education as he himself ran a school in his home for his nephews and other boys.

While discussing the medieval curriculum in his tract, Milton clarifies that the old education system makes learning generally so unpleasing and unsuccessful. He targets grammar as he is critical both of the amount of time spent on it as well as its mechanical emphasis: “we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year”.

Milton says that the progress of students is delayed by “forcing the empty wits of children to compose theme, verses, and orations” while he suggests after attaining some basic idea of grammar and language, students should “be won early to the love of virtue” by having “some easy and delightful book of education” from among the ancient classics read to them. The objective is not simply to teach grammar, but to “inflame [students] with the study of learning”. This, for Milton, was best accomplished through the reading of great literature.

Milton supported the humanistic approach to education against the medieval didactic process of learning. The humanistic theory is composed of three beliefs: first, that education disciplines one in preparation for life as an active citizen; second, that in-depth readings of ancient writers is a critical facet of this discipline; and third, an animosity towards medieval educational practices, which emphasized scholasticism over public life. Milton suggested that education should inspire as it challenges, “infusing into [students’] young breasts such an ingenious and noble ardor, as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men.”

Milton further criticized the sequence of medieval curriculum as he derides the medieval practice of presenting their young unmatriculated novices, at the first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics after having only recently left “those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction."

Instead, he suggested that young students should begin with the easiest arts that are most obvious to the senses. Instead of the deductive method, he supported the inductive method of education that should start with sensible things that students can practical experience. He suggests that students should progress to learning, harder, abstract, invisible things only after mastering the former, practical, empirical inductive education. Thus, while the art of logic and rhetoric was the main base of Medieval education, Milton suggested that rhetoric and logic must be taught at the end. Furthermore, Milton believes that students should be introduced to poetry along with other soft easy arts at the beginning of education as he says that poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.

Thus Milton proposed a curriculum that included grammar, arithmetic, geometry, religion, agriculture, geography, astronomy, physics, trigonometry, ethics, economics, languages, politics, the law, theology, church history, poetry, rhetoric, and logic. Milton believed that students should be prepared to be good, successful, productive citizens of the state in the future.

So this is about the Tracts Of Education by John Milton. We will continue to discuss his other works. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.